


Quantum Entanglement

by Lightning_Strikes_Again



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A look into Emperor Lotor's afterlife, A remix of the s8 finale, An exploration into Princess Allura's depressive state, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Just wildin' in the multiverse of Lotura, Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh struggling with separation, Mentions of Unplanned Pregnancy, Mentions of VLD rift sex, Minor deviations from VLD canon details, Zonerva, but all is not as it seems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning_Strikes_Again/pseuds/Lightning_Strikes_Again
Summary: Part of theAdrenaline Rush Alternate Universe (AR-AU) Collection.Princess Allura of Altea didn’t die in VLD s8. Instead, in saving the multiverse, she became lost in it, crash-landing on an Earth different from the one she knows. She is found by the human Lotor Dalir, who mourns for a dead Allura Singh. But death is not so mysterious when one knows alchemy. And the realm of the dead, where both Allura Singh and Emperor Lotor reside, is not as far as it might seem.VLD canon/AR crossover. (Still Lotor Dalir/Allura Singh and Princess Allura/Emperor Lotor, with some Zonerva included.)
Relationships: AR Allura Singh / AR Lotor Dalir, Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Haggar/Zarkon (Voltron), Honerva/Zarkon (Voltron), Lotura, VLD Allura / VLD Lotor
Comments: 59
Kudos: 75
Collections: Adrenaline Rush Alternate Universe (AR-AU) Stories





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all! So welcome to the second story I’ve decided to upload to the Adrenaline Rush-Alternate Universe collection. I’d started this drabble well back in June of this year, but I’d not uploaded it in fear that it was too wild and its premise perhaps too sad. Writing this was in some way how I thought to work through some real-life angst and my lingering frustrations with VLD s8 as well. Here, I take s8 and twist general interpretations of the end just slightly, to play on VLD’s confirmation that a multiverse truly does exist—and that perhaps Princess Allura didn’t die, but ended up in a far stranger place. 
> 
> If you read, I hope you like it!

Twenty-nine-year-old Lotor Dalir opened a blue, bloodshot eye, and he shakily pulled himself up on his elbows, his white brows knitting together as his bedsheets twisted. White locks slipped down his haggard cheek.

A sudden, loud boom had woken him from a nightmare sleep. In the midst of his hangover, the boom sounded like thunder, and so for a time, he thought himself merely experiencing a storm.

“Ngh,” he complained, only for the crashing sound to shake the grounds of the estate once more. He froze then, the reverberations working up to his elbows. The feeling of it sent a chill through him. It didn’t sound only like thunder—but more like a genuine crash as well, with the creak and hard shriek of metal.

_A crash._

His mind’s eye suddenly recalled the bright explosion of Allura Singh’s dragster from his nightmare—his memory of Allura Singh’s lifeless body in the hospital bed—

Lotor inhaled sharply, squeezing his eyes shut suddenly. He blearily grabbed for his temples, a spike of anxiety rocking through him, and then it was over. He remained on the bed for a time before he forced himself off, his white hair falling into his eyes. He bumped into a table, which clinked with beer and a wine bottle. One of them tipped over, spilling alcohol onto the priceless wood.

He did not care for the wood. His blue eyes maintained their course as he stared out the window, growing increasingly wider. “What in the…world—?”

His velvet voice, hoarse and hitched, trailed off in confusion.

In the distance was a shining, metal mass, glimmering at the edge of the Dalir estate gardens—between the lush foliage and the mountainous, rocky deserts beyond the estate.

Lotor reached out to the curtains of the window to open them further, and lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the hulking metal.

His eyes blew wide, and he stepped back in a stumble.

It was a…

“A pod,” he breathed incredulously. “A metal…ship?”

His voice caught in his throat. There was some kind of experimental government technology that had crash-landed in his mother’s gardens. He hesitated for only a moment before it hit him that technology needed drivers. There were likely people inside it. People who could be injured.

Another accident—another explosion—

The wayward, disheveled man moved to the door, forcing his body to work despite his hangover and insomnia-driven exhaustion. “Of all days,” he moaned to the heavens, voice breaking. “You choose _this_ one. I just wanted to be left alone in my misery. Is that too much to ask?”

He received no response, save for the roll of thunder in the clouds. His handsome face, with his eyes bagged with sleeplessness, tightened. He looked back down at the gardens as he raced forward. It struck him that it was sprinkling out. That it was truly thundering. The desert was in the middle of a rare rainfall.

The mists felt hot against his skin as he slipped through the wild gardens to the edge, where he could see the strange, broken pod. He narrowed bloodshot eyes as he dropped down beside it, eyes wide. He ran his fingers along its edge, which was crumpled from impact, searching for a hatch to open it.

Lotor’s nails caught on an edge, and he grabbed on tightly, face twisting as he attempting to force the paneling up. Buckled and hot, the paneling gave way, lifting off from its latch. He grimaced as its heavy weight, pushing it up and over.

Then he looked down at the contents inside, and he froze.

His heart dropped out.

Inside was a woman. A sleeping, unconscious woman.

And she looked almost, but not quite, like the now-deceased Allura Singh.

At the sight of her, Lotor’s eyes burned with tears, and he inhaled sharply and forgot to breathe out. His breath hitched. The woman was limp in the pod, her bun of white hair half-undone—heavy, curling locks hiding her face. Some of it was pink with blood, as was her odd, armored suit, which bore several indentations with dried trails of blood.

Lotor swallowed hard, even as he instinctively reached out to her. He dared to gently touch her cheek, just as he had done at the beautiful Allura Singh’s funeral. “Madam,” he whispered shakily. “Do not be dead, please do not be dead.”

But unlike Allura Singh, this woman was warm with life.

Tears blurred his vision at the feeling, and he dared to stroke his fingers along the full of her cheek, brushing back her matted, white curls.

It was then Lotor nearly recoiled from her, his breath catching. In the moonlight, he caught sight of sharp, elfin ears. Pink facial markings. “…What is—?” he strangled out, eyes blowing wide. He stared for a second or two before reaching out in full disbelief, daring to trail a finger along the shell of the woman’s inhuman ear, wondering if she—all of this—were somehow a hallucination.

She was solid and warm beneath his touch. More real than the last several months of his life.

The woman’s breath stalled, her armored chest heaving slightly from the unconscious demand for air. Lotor panicked silently as he cupped his long fingers beneath her neck, raising her head gently to help her breathe.

The tension in her bloodied face relaxed as her chest rose. A noise escaped her full, cracked lips, like a sigh. It was a noise just like Allura Singh would make falling asleep.

Something broke in Lotor as he slid his hands beneath her, raising her from out of the coffin-like pod. She felt like Allura Singh, down to the lines of her body and the curve of her cheek as he moved to rest her against him. “Do not fear,” he murmured shakily to her. It was hitting him that this woman was alien, that her ship was not from a human government, that this morning was the day of Allura Singh’s death one year ago. That something felt terribly wrong and terribly right, with this woman in his arms. “I have you. My mother—she knows medical care. She will help you.”

The woman’s hot blood had crusted over, but it smeared flecks onto the white of his now-soaked shirt. Her rain-matted hair slipped against his own as he readjusted her in his arms, carrying her bridal style, her forehead tucked against the crook of his neck.

And he could feel her breath—her warm, living breath—puff against him. In the rain, for the first time since the funeral, Lotor Dalir felt himself break into tears. His breath hitched as he turned back to the ancient estate of his family, where several lights were now on.

In the distance, he saw the sharp, broad lines of his father entering the garden. The man still wore sleeping pants and a robe, his pepper hair wild from sleep.

“What,” Zarkon called, his smooth voice rough in exhaustion and worry, “is going on?”

The heat of the mild rainfall in the desert had spiked up the humidity and a strange fog.

Lotor emerged from the mists, carrying the injured woman as if she were glass. His dark, haggard cheeks were streaked with tears hidden by the rain. Words failed him as he stared at his approaching father. He swallowed back emotion and tried again. “M-mother,” he called weakly. “We need mother.”

Zarkon Dalir, who had aged hard in the last year, appeared at the edge of the garden.

He caught sight of the woman in Lotor’s arms.

And he froze as well.

* * *

Soon, Honerva Dalir was fretting over the strange Allura lookalike, whom Lotor had lain down upon a guest bed. Honerva’s gloved hands were bloody. Her gold eyes were narrowed and white hair pulled back in a messy bun. Her fingers shook lightly as she looped another stich into one of the several lacerations in the woman’s skin.

To her right were strange, rocky slivers in a bloodied pile.

“She is like a planet,” Honerva murmured, voice straining, “after a meteor shower. I do not know what could have caused this. There is no particular pattern to these cuts—only that she seems to have been facing whatever blasted her.”

The unconscious woman on the bed no longer wore her armor. It had taken Honerva and Lotor several minutes to unlatch it from her, the construction unlike any they had seen before. The woman now rested with her stomach bare, with various towels to protect her modesty as Honerva worked to remove foreign rock shards.

Lotor paced behind her, his bloodshot eyes occasionally roving over the woman, and then to his mother. “Perhaps we should transport her to the nearest hospital. She has many wounds.”

Honerva’s voice flattened. “My son, do you not see her alien features.”

“Of course, I see them,” he snapped. He waved his hand in a flail. “But we do not know the extent of her injuries. She may yet die, and I cannot—” His throat closed hard. He turned away, pressing his lips together.

On the other side of the room, Zarkon leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He looked haunted, his haggard face worn at the sight of the strange woman sleeping on the bed. “It is not her, Lotor. Whatever this is, it cannot be her.”

Lotor’s eyes slid to his father. “Then how do you explain such resemblance?” he demanded incredulously. “Allura had no twin. Even if she is not…like us—” he could not bring himself to call her an alien, in fear of the implications—“do you not find it strange that she is an exact match, down to even the slope of her nose?”

Zarkon did not answer for a time.

The younger man’s eyes brightened with tears. “Do you think I wouldn’t know her, after the months I spent with her?”

“I do not question that you did…know Allura Singh,” the father murmured, voice roughening with pain. He ran a frazzled hand through his hair. “But there must be an explanation. A logical one.”

Lotor’s voice raised. “It is _her_ body,” he declared shakily. “Allura Singh had a birthmark upon her right breast. She had a scar on her hip from an accident as a child. There are several other scars. This woman bears all those markings, down to the exact location and shape. Do not tell me that my suggestion is illogical.”

The father’s face hardened in pain.

Honerva’s voice echoed through the room. “You two are distracting me.” She pulled away, running a wrist over her sweaty forehead, catching her own white hair with some of the woman’s blood. “And she has injuries in other areas. I need to—get to them before infection sets in.” Some of the lacerations had puffed, as if too much time had already passed from her initial injury. “I want you both to leave now.”

Lotor turned back to his mother. “I can help you.”

Her gold eyes, pained and exhausted, roved over her son, who was water-logged from the rain, his shirt still bearing the blood of the strange woman. “Go bathe, my dear. I will be done soon. The worst of it seems to be her stomach and legs, but I would rather be thorough.”

He swallowed hard. He looked as though he would try to argue—it was not as though he had not seen Allura Singh naked, that he could not somehow offer help to cleanse her wounds—but then he inhaled sharply and turned his face. He breathed out in a sigh. “…Very well.” With great, worried reluctance he slipped out of the room.

Zarkon watched his wife as she sat by the bedside, grabbing for her tweezers again and another alcohol pad. “….Do you honestly believe this…this woman is her?”

Honerva’s eyes slid to him. And for the first time, something almost akin to tears watered her eyes. “Lotor loved her,” she said quietly. “He knew all of her markings and searched for them as we removed her armor. I am not certain how such identical markings and scars are possible, if this woman is not somehow Allura.”

A silence fell over them.

It had been a full year since the death of Allura Singh. They had known their son would be volatile—and they had done everything they could to keep him within the confines of the Dalir estate, to watch over him as he drank away his misery, unable to offer him further solace. They had hidden all the pictures they could of Allura, had turned off the internet and TVs. They had hidden his phone, which he had gladly handed over, too pained to even think of browsing social media with her face plastered over it. He’d promised not to do anything truly self-harming—that he just wanted to take the edge off his memories and sleep away the day. For good measure, Zarkon had removed all weapons in the house, including the kitchen knives, in worry that his son would lose his senses in grief. Through the night, Zarkon even had alarms set to go check on his sleeping son.

 _Time heals all wounds,_ they had told him. _It is only one day of the year. It will get easier and easier, until one day you will think of her and be able to smile._

But they did not know what time’s plan was with this strange woman, who bore the face and body of Lotor’s only real love.

And yet who was also something entirely, unnaturally _alien_.

* * *

Lotor Dalir sat in the bathtub in his private washroom, his arms wrapped around his legs, his tired cheek leaning against his knees. His body had wasted to a certain extent over the last year, during which even the taste of funnel cake had turned to ash in his mouth. The lithe muscles he once had were tight cords against his thinner body. He felt bony at times.

He sat in the warm waters and simply watched the locks of his hair float around him, his eyes catching on the pink and purple blooms within the bubbles. His heart fluttered in strange ways as his eyes blurred.

There was a sudden pounding on the door. “Lotor?” came his father’s muffled voice, tight with worry. “Are you in here?”

He sighed, closing his eyes in irritation. Tears streaked down his sharp cheeks. “Father,” he moaned against his skin. “I am bathing, do not come in. Please.”

“…Are you alright?”

“I am not drowning myself,” Lotor retorted sharply, “if you are still worried about such things.” A sharper irritation worked through him. “Can you not simply leave me be?”

A silence fell between the washroom and the door.

In the past year, their relationship had taken odd turns, their bond deepening through the collective loss of Allura Singh. It made for awkward times on occasion—with Zarkon attempting to be more a part of Lotor’s life. Lotor attempting to ask for wisdom. Lotor breaking down in tears at the oddest of times, especially at the sight of unicorns or pink. 

Zarkon’s voice echoed in, softer. “Forgive me. I…know you would have preferred to stay by your mother’s side.”

 _By the woman’s side_ , came the silent accusation.

Lotor raised a hand from the waters to wipe his eyes. “It is just as well,” his voice strangled out. He managed a miserable huff of amusement. He had forgotten how to truly laugh. “Perhaps the woman has Allura’s body but neither her mind nor her memories. Perhaps she would be disturbed by a strange man tending her. But then you do not believe she is Allura at all. Maybe the similarities are in my head.”

Another silence.

The father leaned against the door. “Your mother believes you.”

“But you do not.”

Zarkon’s voice halted. “I….do not know what to believe.”

Lotor closed his eyes, a sharp pain pulling through him at the memory of Allura Singh waving at him one last time before she’d climbed into Black Lion. It had been the last race of the championship. She’d carried a great lead, even against his father. It was supposed to have been the easiest, least stressful run of her career.

“ _Give me a kiss me for good luck_ ,” she had demanded earlier that day, playful, even before cameras.

He’d looked down at her in delight. “ _I would give you more than that, if we had the tim_ e.”

“ _Oh, please. We’ll have all the time in the world. Just a kiss for now, good sir, if you do not mind_.”

Lotor winced out of his memories. He unraveled from himself, grabbing onto the tub’s edge, searching for something solid. “This woman is her,” he declared, voice rough, throat raw. “I would know Allura anywhere. Ignore the ears and the facial markings. It is _her_.”

And then he looked down at his hands, which bore sharper lines. It struck him that perhaps he had changed. That he was not the same man Allura Singh had fallen in love with. A new anxiety hit him. He ran a wet hand through his tangled hair, then touched his own rough jaw, streaking water down his face.

 _But who am I_ , he wondered in fear.

* * *

The alien woman groaned lightly as she woke up, her white lashes fluttering. Brilliant, blue and purple eyes opened to the stone ceiling of the Dalir estate.

A hoarse, weak voice escaped the woman. “…Honerva?” she whispered, her alien eyes narrowing blearily to focus. Her tone was a sweet alto. A perfect match to the tone of Allura Singh.

A cold chill worked through Honerva’s body as she stared down at the woman. Her aged face tightened. “You know my name, child?”

The woman turned her head, staring up listlessly. A raw, vulnerable edge broke her peace. “Did we make it?” she begged. Her eyes grew glassy. She seemed feverish. “Did we s-save them?”

Honerva hesitated to answer, disturbed by the woman’s vocal patterns and the way that she so perfectly mirrored Allura Singh. “I’m not sure to whom you are referring.” She kept her voice smooth and calm. “But you were injured. I’ve been working to patch you up.”

The alien woman shakily searched her eyes, tears streaking down her marked cheeks. “The multiverse,” she whispered. “All realities. If we are here now—” her breath hitched in pain—“am I alive? Or—or am I in some sort of hell?” Pain was beginning to work through her as she grew more aware of herself, her small hands weakly clenching, her blanketed legs twitching. She looked up at the ceiling in increasing panic. “Where am I?”

Honerva stood, her long, white braid falling down one shoulder. “You need to breathe, dear,” she murmured. “You are safe and very much alive. You are on—”

Suddenly, the woman’s eyes narrowed to slits as she blinked away tears. In a blur, she raised herself from the bed and grabbed for Honerva’s neck.

The older woman strangled out a cry, her gold eyes widening as she instinctively raised her hands to grasp the alien-Allura’s.

Allura’s face twisted in pained suspicion. “You would never call me dear,” she whispered hoarsely, holding tight to Honerva’s neck with an inhuman strength. Blue and purple eyes roved over the panicked woman’s face. “Your markings are gone. You have human ears. You are not Honerva.”

Honerva gasped for air, desperately attempting to breathe or speak. The alien’s fingers, as small as they were, carried a steel that promised certain death.

The younger woman’s expression twisted hard in pain as several of her stitches broke open, her mild lacerations beginning to bleed through the baggy t-shirt she was wearing. Her hand around Honerva’s throat began to shake and weaken. “Is this another illusion?” Her voice broke with great pain. “Is everyone dead?”

The room was silent, save for Honerva’s rasping breaths. The mother closed her eyes, weak from lack of air. “S-son,” she rasped in a plea. “M-my son. Saved you.”

The alien’s eyes blew wide.

Her hand slipped away from Honerva’s neck, recoiling hard.

Honerva’s aged face relaxed in relief as she leaned against the bed and attempted to breathe. She raised her hand to touch her aching throat. Tears rose in her eyes, even as she stared at the woman in disbelief. “He s-saved you,” she whispered, broken voice hardening. “But you are n-not Allura Singh at all, are you.”

The alien stared at her in horror. Her shaky hand came to touch the white shirt she was wearing, then her own face. Tear bubbled in her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. Genuine panic was overtaking her now. Her breath came in heaves as she stared at Honerva, fully haunted. “Allura…Singh? Your son?”

The older woman sat back down, face pained as she rubbed her throat, still gasping for air. There as a weariness in her now as she stared at Allura.

Despite her frail appearance, the alien had unnatural strength.

Honerva rasped, “You knew my name, but I don’t even know what you are. How do you know me?”

Blue and purple eyes widened in confusion. “I was—I was with you.” Tears streaked down her face as she looked upon her arms, which were bandaged up from her cuts. Some red had begun to splotch through. “With Honerva. There was a great light, like an explosion, and then pain.” She touched the rough material of her shirt. Her breath hitched as she shakily wiped her eyes. Her elfin ears drooped. “Surely this cannot be the afterlife.”

The older woman paused, watching the girl’s strange mannerisms. “You are _alive_ ,” she whispered hoarsely. “And in my house as a guest. Do not raise your hand against me again, and I will tell you more.”

The alien’s fearful, half-hopeful eyes snapped to her. Her strength was wearing out, beneath the weight of her pain and the fever that raged in her. Her long, white curls slipped down to the pillow as she hesitantly leaned back. More tears bubbled in her eyes. “You look like her,” she whispered shakily. “You sound like her. But I do not—sense her power in you.”

Honerva still rubbed her throat on occasion, clearing it in an attempt to recapture her dignity.

The younger woman’s strength began to wane. “Voltron,” she pleaded. “Quintessence. Do these words mean anything to you?”

Honerva nodded. She wearily raised her hands, showing that she carried no weapon, hoping to appease the woman’s fears. “They do mean things to me, but I suspect you might have different…things in mind. Now lay back. You’ve injured yourself.”

The beautiful alien leaned back upon the bed easily enough, grasping desperately for bedsheets. She looked ill for a time as she touched her stomach, feeling stitch after stitch in her skin, and the goopy, consistency of salve seeping into her shirt, mixing with broken stiches and blood. “Oh,” she whispered, eyes wide. Her teary face flushed in embarrassment, that she wore so little. That her injuries had lacerated her in many intimate places. That this woman with Honerva’s face was tending her. “I’m so—confused.”

“…As am I,” Honerva deadpanned in worry.

The woman looked up, broken. “You are real, yes? You are not an illusion?” She weakly reached out. “Your son—you said you had a son—”

Honerva reached out and dared to grasp the woman’s hand, raising it up for inspection. She bore fewer scars on her hands than Allura Singh had, but her fingers were heavily calloused.

“Lotor,” the strange alien-Allura begged, tears slipping down her face. Her breath hitched oddly. “Is that his name? Please tell me. Please.”

Honerva hesitated, then nodded.

The alien woman broke, her every limb falling limp as she stared up at the ceiling. Her hand shook in Honerva’s grasp. There was an anxiety in her as much as a terrible hope. “Lotor,” she cried. The name tore from her in a ragged way. “And—he lives?”

“Of course.”

That did it.

The woman closed her eyes, her breath shuddering in misery, even as tears slid down her face. A sound escaped her, like a moan. All of her strength left her in that second, until she was a limp, sweaty mess upon the bed, dazed as tear after tear silently fell from her blurry eyes.

Honerva swallowed hard, feeling rattled. “Your wounds—you reopened several. I need to re-stitch those.”

The woman did not respond. Instead, she simply stared out at the wall behind Honerva, shuddering through another breath.

“I need to raise your shirt and re-stitch you,” Honerva tried again, quickly pulling on gloves. “I’ve some local anesthetic I can give you so you will not feel a thing.”

The alien still did not respond, even as Honerva tentatively pulled away the rumpled bedsheets and raised up the shirt hem, peeling it away from bloodied stitches. The distressed woman had broken at least seven around her ribs. Her alien physiology suggested she had additional ribs compared to a regular human skeleton, but Honerva attempted to ignore the unsettling differences.

And then the strange Allura briefly flickered her eyes to Honerva, roving over the reddened skin of her aged neck. “Let me feel it,” she whispered. “The pain.”

Honerva’s gold eyes focused upon hers. “Why?”

The woman’s breath halted. “Because I once killed your son.” She swallowed back emotions that shook her whole body. “I ruined everything.” When she breathed in, she sucked in air so hard that her ribs stretched against skin, and another stitch broke under the force. Her watery eyes focused on Honerva’s reddened neck. “Now, I have—hurt you as well, strange Honerva.”

For as beautiful as the woman was, she looked utterly defeated. The patterns in her voice were unlike any that had ever escaped the mouth of Allura Singh.

_I killed your son._

Honerva pressed her thin lips together to hide her increasing emotional turmoil. “My son carried you to me,” she whispered. “If he is dead because of you, then it’s in spirit only.” She hesitantly broke out the anesthetic ointment, daring to brush it over the alien woman’s wounds. She said nothing of her own reddened throat. She could feel the guilt streaming off the woman in waves. “Forcing you to endure pain will not fix such things.”

Allura’s tears slipped down her nose and jaw as she lay silently, shuddering through breath after breath, her nails digging tight into the bedsheets. A feverish realization was in her eyes now. That somehow, everything was real but wrong.

“Multiverse,” she whispered. “The branches, connected.” She blinked several times, her tears slipping down into the warm, soft pillow beneath her head, soaking into the cloth. She lay still as she heard the snipping of thread and felt the slightest of pressures from Honerva resewing her injuries back up. On the bedside table was a bowl of bloodied shrapnel—sharp rocks and slivers of metal.

The woman’s fingers briefly crackled with the glow of quintessence before it snuffed out. The feeling left her with a dazed awe that she felt powerless. Broken.

She closed her eyes and allowed exhaustion to take her.

* * *

Sometime later, Honerva Dalir paced in her son’s room, self-consciously pulling on the scarf around her neck, hoping to hide the reddened fingerprint marks from her family. “She is not the Allura you know, my son.”

Lotor sat on the edge of his bed. He was clean now, his hair thickening as it dried, his handsome face clean-shaven. His broad shoulders were covered in the fine silks of an expensive, blue sleeping tunic, which he occasionally ran his hands down to smooth them of wrinkles. His eyes were bloodshot and anxious. “In what way? Simply that she is not of…here?”

Honerva’s gold eyes flickered to him. “She’s not stable and says she killed you where she is from. I am not certain it is a good idea for you to see her.”

The man hesitated at that. “Killed?”

“Yes.” Honerva swallowed hard, feeling the ache in her throat. “And I believe her.”

The man stood up, his white hair a flurry about his cheeks. “I want to see her,” he demanded, his handsome face pulling hard in agony. “She is Allura. Some part of her is the Allura I know. I do not care what she has told you.”

The mother sighed. “I know I cannot stop you, my son. But this universe—it is a strange place. I do not know what kind of anomaly this is, but do not let her face fool you.”

There was a strain in her voice. A warning that he was about to tread in dangerous territory.

His blue eyes leveled with hers. “She will not harm me,” he declared, voice wavering. In his mind’s eye was Allura Singh, reaching up on her tip-toes to offer a kiss on his cheek. He could still feel her innocent hands trail his jaw.

Lotor turned away, breath hitching. “She will not harm me.”

* * *

The mysterious alien woman sat propped up on pillows, wearing a fluffy robe that belonged to Honerva. Her face was haggard with exhaustion, her eyes bloodshot with tears, her thick curls streaming down her back. Her elfin ears were drooped as she shuddered through another breath. Her eyes were glassy with fever now.

The human Honerva had promised some sort of medication called an antibiotic to help with her infection, pending an initial blood test. She had promised to return within the varga—the hour, as humans called it.

But Allura was beginning fear if perhaps something else were not wrong. Her thoughts felt cloudy as she lay on the bed. She was sweating beneath the human clothes she wore. Her stiches itched, and it was all she could do not to scratch at them with what little energy she had.

She hardly even heard the sound of the door opening.

Soft footsteps—a gait different from Honerva’s—entered into the room. “Allura?”

Her eyes flew open, cold water storming down her even as her heart rose. That voice—that velvet, male voice. She knew as she knew her own. She turned her cheek desperately. Her exhausted eyes searched for him. She weakly called, “Lotor?”

Against the soft lights of the room, a tall and lithe man sat down beside her bed. She caught sight of familiar, white hair. A sharp jaw. Blue eyes.

Allura’s breath hitched as a cry overcame her. Before her was a living image of the man she had killed—the man she thought she had loved, without whom the world had grown dark and strange and cold. But he was also man who had struck back at her—ripped holes in the space-time continuum—

She weakly reached out to him.

His warm, human hand gripped her own.

The touch broke them both.

“Allura,” he whispered shakily. It was a far cry from the violent, ragged threats of the man as she had last known him. He clasped his other hand to hers, encasing her as if she were glass. His hands were trembling as he stroked her warm skin.

She looked up at him, searching him with alien, blue and purple eyes. Her vision blurred entirely until tears slipped down her cheeks, and her throat tightened up so hard that she could not speak the thousands of words she had thought to speak in Lotor’s presence. She had many things to say, knowing now that he had died in the rift, and that they both had caused great cataclysms in their anger. Perhaps a part of her knew it would all be irrelevant anyway—that this Lotor was not truly _her_ Lotor.

But he was living nonetheless, and so beautiful, even as a human. A living fairytale prince in the strange castle of Earth.

Her heart moved.

Lotor’s handsome face twisted in pain as tears streaked silently down his face. He did not let go of her hand, nor did he speak words to explain himself. He simply held her hand as she held his, silent. He raised her hand to his lips and closed his eyes as he pressed a gentle kiss to her living skin, fervent.

The princess swallowed back hard emotion. She felt, for all of her great power, small and insignificant compared to the undeserved worship he bestowed upon her. She whispered, “I believe this encounter is—due to a convergence of our respectable worlds. For I am not of your world, and you are not of mine. But I must ask. Is…is this Allura Singh I hear of kind to you? And are you kind to her?”

The man’s face broke. For a time, he could say nothing, his throat tight. And then he squeezed her hand. His velvet voice halted. “She was the light of my life.”

Allura’s eyes brimmed with tears. “…She is dead?”

Lotor nodded. The strong lines of his face and shoulders quivered with strong emotion. “I see her in you.”

That did it. The princess reached up to touch his face. This version of Lotor looked older than she knew—gaunter with exhaustion. Breakable. She reached to his sharp cheek, running a trembling line to the softly curved shell of his ear. She ached to feel him, even if he were not hers. Even if he were human in this strange world.

The man closed his eyes, tears slipping down his face as goose-bumps rose upon his arms. He leaned into her touch.

Allura’s voice wavered. “I see my world’s Lotor in you as well.”

* * *

And somewhere in the vast expanse of space and time, one Allura Singh groaned at the feeling of a large, hot hand pressing against her cheek, her temple prickling with the feeling of claws. “Come on now,” came a soft, velvet murmur. “Wake for me.”

Her white brows knitted together, and she groaned. “Five more minutes.” And then she turned into the heat of the palm, which felt familiar to her, like Lotor’s. On instinct, she nuzzled against it, her lips turning up in delight of him.

A soft huff of amusement flitted above her. “You have been asleep for almost a deca-phoeb, Allura.”

“Hn.” She was not particularly concerned.

The familiar, male voice leaned in closer. With his free hand, he brushed curls out of her eyes. “How stubborn you are,” he murmured curiously. “Most sleep in this field for a quintant or a phoeb. But you do not wish to let go of your life, do you?”

The haze of dreams began to fade away. Something felt off to her as she lay there weightlessly, feeling claws brush her hair.

“It is alright to open your eyes,” came the man’s soft murmur. “There is nothing to fear here.” His hand slipped from her cheek.

Allura’s eyes fluttered open at the loss of heat, and she whined. Everything was bright around her, and her dreams of winning the championship were fading way. “Lotor, must you ruin my mornings always—I was—” she yawned, then stretched out—”having the nicest dream.”

And then she turned her face, and she saw a purple-skinned man with yellow and blue eyes and fangs staring back.

And she squeaked, eyes widening. The sleep slipped from her, and she pushed him away, scooting back. Flowers—juniberries?—fell from her clothes. The world was bright and sunny, and the grass beneath her was soft like velvet. But the man with Lotor’s face and voice before her wore dark clothes, sticking out strangely in the midst of the wonders.

She gaped at him in utter consternation.

The alien man smiled weakly, revealing small fangs. “Ah, if I did not ruin your mornings, how then would you know it is me.” His white brows knitted together. “There are some things that are always the same in every universe. I am quite good at unsettling you, no matter the dimension from which we hail.”

Allura Singh stared wide-eyed at the man, breathing hard. The alarm she felt steeled her arms. “What in the world—? _Lotor_?”

He smiled more brightly, his fangs glimmering. He was sitting cross-legged, wearing strange space armor, but his way of carrying himself—his smile—the slope of his nose and angles of his face—were all so terribly familiar. He tilted his head, the wind carrying wisps of his hair in a dance about his shoulders. “Emperor Lotor, if you are curious,” he murmured airily.

There was a contentment in his eyes that eased the lines around them. And for all his fangs and claws, he did not rise against her, but simply remained leaning forward in interest.

Allura Singh inhaled shakily, raising a hand to her chest to calm her heart. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, alarmed. “What in the world are you supposed to be? Where am I?” Her voice raised incredulously as she fixated upon his long, elfin ears. “And what in heaven are those?” Without preamble, she reached out and grabbed onto one of Lotor’s ears. “Is this for a renaissance festival, or—”

The man’s alien eyes widened as she yanked him forward. “—Ah, those are quite real,” he strangled out, his beautiful voice raising between a laugh and a groan of pain. “You are strong for a human, Allura. I do believe the Princess Allura of Altea would delight in you, I am sure of it.”

Allura’s breath hitched as the elfin edge of his ear did not give way, even as she yanked on it lightly again, then fearfully stopped. “How is this not coming off.” She then squished her hand against his cheek and began to rub furiously. “Did you paint yourself too this color? Will it wash away?”

The alien man humored her, remaining still and looking a bit disgruntled as she rubbed his cheek, blooming it red from friction. “I fear not,” he said, voice straining. “Different universes confer different attributes. This is the skin I was born with.”

And then of all things, the woman paused to lean forward and stare at his fangs. “By the stars,” she whispered. She reached out and haphazardly pushed his lip back, leaning forward as he leaned back in surprise. He began to scoot back more. She followed him, most curious and without fear. “How in the world did you manage such a costume. Everything is most real—why, even these fangs are quite something. And your way of speaking is a bit off. Are you attempting a posher way of saying things, Lotor? I had no idea you had such interest in renaissance fairs and dressing up—”

The alien man garbled out a response, grabbing lightly for her hand. His clawed fingers wrapped around her own gently, pulling her away from his mouth. He held her hand as if it were glass, and he swallowed hard.

The wind whipped between them in the silence.

“I am not in disguise,” he murmured firmly, his white brows knitting together fervently. “And this is not a festival, but instead a quantum realm.” His eyes were too knowledgeable, too bright to be alive. He seemed to be glowing at times beneath the sun. His long, clawed fingers stroked hers, as if attempting to offer comfort. “I felt your spirit struggling to connect to your body. It was calling to mine. And so I woke you.”

She looked down at the claws upon his fingertips. She felt no fear from being in the presence of this strange Lotor, even as it struck her that this was truly a Lotor of some kind. That he was genuinely alien.

Allura Singh looked up at him in wonder, and he looked down at her with a similar expression.

His eyes searched hers. “You longed for my face,” he said, voice halted. He reached out and lightly dusted ash from her forehead. “There is a Lotor in your world—you were waiting for him to wake you up, as he always does. That was all you needed to start your day, wasn’t it.”

The woman stared at him.

And then she nodded in a daze.

The man’s lips stretched in delight, revealing fangs once more. But he did not scare her like that—instead, it seemed a thousand years fell from his shoulders, lightening his soul. He reached out and dared to touch her face, in awe. “What wondrous knowledge, to see you confirm it. That in another life, you and I could love.”

* * *

The Princess Allura of Altea leaned heavily on the infamous Lotor Dalir, her marked cheek resting upon his arm as helped her sit up. Feverish, exhausted, her steel strength had left her, and she was little more than a doll in his arms.

When he touched her, she could feel his love for this Allura Singh. His agony in want for her.

It brought tears to her eyes and a deep longing to feel him hold her more. That somehow, despite being flung across the multiverse, there was a Lotor who loved and ached for her and was not a cruel man. She reached up, her fingers weakly tightening into the loose material of his tunic. He was not as muscled as the Lotor she knew, but strong in a human way.

She felt his human breath puffed against the top of her head with amusement. His voice was still watery with emotion. “Allura, if you hold onto me like this, I fear I will fall on top of you.”

She closed her eyes. “There are worse things,” she whispered.

He pressed his lips into the curls of her white hair. One of his hands came to caress her hand, gently pulling it from his tunic. “I would not add to your pain, love. Your wounds are still healing.”

_Love._

That term that so easily slipped from his lips. He tensed briefly in saying it at times—it must have been habit, to call his Allura Singh _love_.

The princess’s eyes misted with tears as he pulled away. “You have already added to my pain,” she confessed shakily. “How jealous I am of your Allura.”

The man sat back down beside her bed, his blue eyes narrowing in concern. “Why do you say such things? How have I hurt you?”

She sniffled, blinking away tears as she stared at him. It hurt to see him as Lotor, just as much as it relieved her. “You are so pleasant and kind. The Lotor I knew is not.”

The spark of concern in this human Lotor flared into a tightened face and breath of disbelief. “The Lotor of your world—did he hurt you?”

Allura hesitated, then nodded, her breath hitching. “But then I hurt him too. And now he is dead.”

The man looked oddly as if he already knew something, but he looked away, licking his lip. His voice grew halted. “If you do not wish to speak of it, then I will not ask for more. But I do not believe you would strike at anyone without reason.”

She fell silent, watching his face. Wondering when he would pull away from her. “I thought he had killed my people,” she whispered.

Lotor looked haunted at that. “Did he?”

Allura did not answer for a time. Her tears slipped down her cheeks to her jaw and lower, falling to her shirt. “Truly, I never learned the full story,” she whispered.

* * *

Meanwhile, Honerva Dalir stared at the printout from the computer, her eyes wide and haunted. She was standing in the small chemistry lab of their home, where she had spent over a decade attempting to cure herself and Lotor of Quintessence Toxicity Syndrome, researching it on the days she felt she had the strength to do it. The technology had begun to age, but she still had the ability to analyze blood for its various components.

Her Nobel Peace Prize glimmered off a shelf, along with various awards for developing a treatment to cure children of QTS—her legacy through Lotor.

Behind her, a tired Zarkon slipped his large hands down her shoulders, leaning against her. “You have worked tirelessly,” he murmured to her. “But this woman will not die, thanks to your healing hands. You should rest, my love.”

Her fingers clenched into the paper. “I cannot rest.” But she leaned against her husband’s temple, her voice cracking. “Zarkon. This woman who appears as Allura—do you see these readouts?”

His dark eyes flickered over the paper, seeing percentages. Readings for different kinds of substances. “Is this a blood test?”

“Yes.” Her thin finger pointed to a particular metric. “She has all the same blood markers as human do—with the exception of a few substances I do not know. But look at her hormones, which mimic human ones.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. He fell silent as he considered the numbers. He did not even know which metrics were the hormones in question.

Honerva pulled away to stare up at him. “Zarkon.” Her voice shook. “This woman is pregnant. And the fetal DNA circulating her system—” She rapidly shuffled a few other papers, insistently pointing at a more complicated readout, which contained gene names. “It contains several markers that do not match her own blood, but _Lotor’s_.”

Zarkon paused. “How are you certain of this?”

“I know our son.” Her voice hardened in pain and consternation. “You know the research I performed to heal him, all those years ago. This is _his_ DNA mixed with hers—I am certain of it.”

“That is impossible,” the father scoffed, his voice straining. “Our son could not have possibly—”

“— _Or_ ,” Honerva cut in, her eyes lit with a fear and a curiosity, “—there is another Lotor where this woman comes from. And for that to be so, another version of us as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes part one of probably the wildest drabble I’ve written yet using AR-universe, haha. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for indulging my imagination. I imagine not a lot of people care so much for this kind of story. So thank you to those who are actively exploring the AR-AU collection! I’ve got a little more of this drabble already written from last June, so if you’d like to see more, please let me know! 
> 
> As much as s8 bothered me, I'll admit an interest in exploring the "what ifs" had Princess Allura survived restoring the multiverse. The decision to have Allura Singh deceased in this story was for symmetry--that perhaps the events in one universe somehow do affect the events in another, in which Princess Allura surviving such a blast at the end of s8 meant that Allura Singh could not survive another racing crash. 
> 
> As I work to upload some of these old side drabbles, please know that I am continuing to write the main Adrenaline Rush story and hope to update it soon as well. Thank you!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following amazing people for reviewing last time: Wallflwr97, tuonetar, LunarMagnolia, Murcielago_04, Espanholina, MalevoLiss (MissLissa1), Brynn, NickyADon, Tick+Klock, Paranormally_Normal.
> 
>   * Wallflwr97: Guh, thankie dear for your kind words! I hope your tears have dried by now, haha. I appreciate you taking a chance on this wild thing of a story. And yaaaas, had to put in the rift sex. Quite possibly the best thing to come out of Voltron, next to Lotor and Allura themselves, haha. Thanks again
>   * Tuonetar: Bless your heart for reading this twice! And ahh, I’m so glad you’re liking this version of Honerva. I want to hug them too
>   * LunarMagnolia: Thank you for taking the time to re-read and review, even though you’ve read it before, haha. I really appreciate it! More Zonerva is on its way for you, dear!
>   * Murcielago_04: Thank you for dropping a line with your support! I hope you enjoy the next chapter!
>   * Espanholina: Aww, dear, bless your heart for being willing to try out some angst, even if you don’t usually read such. I hope you can continue to enjoy it! The story, as we go along, will definitely answer your question, although it might be in a chapter beyond this one. Thanks again!!
>   * MalevoLiss (MissLissa1): As always, thank you so much for your support and reviews!! They mean a lot!
>   * Brynn: Bless you for your time in reading and providing extended reviews on just about everything of mine recently, haha. I really do appreciate it! And thank you for taking a risk with reading this one; I knew the premise wasn’t likely to attract many people because it’s just so…out there, haha. But I hope you can continue to enjoy this one!
>   * NickyADon: As always, thank you so much for your support of my stories! And ahh, I love your analysis regarding the gender role swaps and tropes! Much appreciated!
>   * Tick+Klock: Thank you, dear! I miss Lotura too, haha, so I imagine I might yet be in this fandom for a while to play around in a Lotura sandbox. I appreciate your review and support!
>   * Paranormally_Normal: Bless you for your review! I shall try to spoil you with more content; I hope you will continue to enjoy this one!
> 


Allura Singh clung unsteadily to the long, inhuman arm of Emperor Lotor of the Galra. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the strange realm of death to which she had ascended. “You have been here for three years?”

The alien man’s voice was a perfect mimic of Lotor Dalir. “I believe so, but time does not particularly affect these lands.” His large, warm hand came to rest over her own. “Everything becomes more pleasant, the longer one stays here. Bitterness, pain—these are difficult concepts to hold in tension here. It slips away, eventually.”

Allura looked up at him, searching his kind and peaceful face. Her own expression was tight. “And what happens here?” she whispered. “Where do we go?”

His elfin ear flicked. “Some have gone,” he murmured, “to return to the branches of the universes, which expand outward ongoingly. Others do not wish to experience death again and so remain here, as I have.” He smiled, and it was a lazy, pleasant expression—the sort of smile Lotor Dalir would give her when nuzzling her awake in the morning. “Truly, I have never felt such peace.”

The fallen alien emperor seemed almost enlightened with the level of contentment he exuded, lifting his face to the warmth of the sun above, the wind flickering through his hair, as if to caress him.

“And, um, my father?” she whispered, eyes wide.

“He has returned to the branches of the universe. I fear he is a restless spirit yet.” There was a merriment in Lotor’s voice—a knowledge that somehow, at the end of it, a goodbye was never permanent. “We cannot return to the timelines from which we were born, but there are many other worlds to experience and enjoy. Some people here have lived many lives, and they return with the greatest of tales.”

Allura pulled away from him. Her heart ached suddenly, and tears rose to her eyes. “Do you mean, he is not here? My father? My mother? Anyone?”

Lotor’s alien eyes slid to her. Concern flickered through his peace. “You do have a father here, though not the one you may recognize by sight alone. Humans are more…agile at jumping back into life than we are, I suppose. Or perhaps our tragedies extend more greatly, and so we remain much longer.”

Allura’s eyes watered.

The man gently grasped her hand. “I have upset you.”

Her breath halted, even as she blinked rapidly. “How can I be happy here?” she whispered. “Without them? Is death so fragmented? Where is the unity in this?” A huge wave of emotion tore through her. “And—and why am I dead at all? How did I get here? I don’t remember. I don’t remember a thing.” She began to tremble, her hand shaking in his.

The once-emperor’s face broke for her. He dropped her hand to open his long arms.

The woman hiccupped with tears and then willingly barreled into him, desperate for familiarity. His armor was warm with his Galran heat, and despite his alien height and length of his limbs, he hugged her as Lotor Dalir did—all encompassing. Protective.

He smelled like the spice of Lotor Dalir’s cologne.

She breathed it in desperately between tears, leaning against him as his claws came to stroke her hair. The action was familiar. The weight of his fingers calmed her frazzled nerves.

“I am sorry,” he murmured to her roughly. He took on her sorrow as he held her. “I do not know what took your life. We cannot see into the timelines here. But all things converge eventually. All tears and pains fade.” He leaned his head against hers, his alien eyes closing fervently, his velvet voice raising with great conviction. “And I have learned that no one is ever alone.”

Allura’s tears slipped down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. Her fingers tightened in the flexible fabric of his suit at his waist. She clung to him hard, feeling confused and lost and that he was her only anchor in the entire universe. She leaned against him fully, feeling weak as her heart broke.

Her trembling fingers spoke what she could not.

The alien man murmured against her, his voice a smooth and soft wave vibrating into her, “Truly, I was confused and hurt as well, when I woke up in this realm.” His claws stroked down her curls. “I threw a tantrum for days and wandered, pacing for the edges of this place. I thought it a cage.”

Allura cried against him silently, afraid to speak of what she thought of it. This alien Lotor was kind. The air was pleasant. Everything was so pleasant, except for her.

“Of all things,” he confessed, “my father—my _true_ father—found me. I was in such a state. He did not fight me, but allowed me to lash out at him in every way I could, until I wore myself down.” His face twisted. “In my world, my father was cruel to me, corrupted by power. But his true soul resided here in wait, praying that I had survived him.” The emotions of it made his own eyes water. “It is very difficult to hold onto heaviness here. I promise you, Allura, you _will_ feel happiness again, even when you do not believe it possible.”

His calloused thumb brushed the back side of her neck in a familiar way.

Her tears slid down his warm armor.

And he held her like that for a long while, the ground beneath them soaking up the emotions of pain and suffering and confusion, until she leaned against him silently in exhaustion, simply breathing in time with him.

* * *

The Princess Allura of Altea winced as she pulled herself up on the bed, her stitches catching oddly. “I am usually not so weak,” she mourned softly, staring down at herself and at the bandages on her arm. The bedsheets the Dalir family had offered her were soft and silky—and now they were rumpled with her sweat and the stain of salve. She felt utterly disgusting and yet hardly had the energy to care. “I’ve felt…tired for a long time now.”

To the left of her bed, Lotor Dalir held a bowl of bean soup, watching her in worry. Her fever had broken hours ago, but she appeared smaller than before. As if even the weight of breathing was too much for her. “It will help to eat,” he murmured to her, turning the spoon in the bowl. “I could assist you if you asked for it.”

Her blue and purple eyes watched him, sunken in from her beautiful face. “You are so kind to me,” she whispered, then swallowed hard. She had soaked her clothes and the bedsheets in sweat from fever and infection, her curls matted to her cheek. Never before had she ever been so physically vulnerable. So ugly. “If—you knew what I had done, you would not be as kind.”

Lotor stared at her as if she were the entire world. “I have lost one Allura—I will not lose another, simply because she failed to eat.”

The princess blinked slowly. She stared at him in a stubborn self-hatred. Her eyes glimmered with a spark reminiscent of Allura Singh.

Lotor’s lips tightened together, and then he leaned forward, holding out a spoonful of the thick, pureed soup. “I know you like black beans,” he murmured. “This is entirely vegetarian as well. No cows or any other animal, just as you prefer.”

The smell of the soup was spicy and intoxicating to the princess, who had not eaten since before the great reversal of Honerva’s destruction. Her stomach grumbled for her, and Lotor’s eyes lightened in a tired merriment as he held out a spoonful to her lips.

Princess Allura watched him with a slight suspicion. And then she sighed in an enduring way, only to halt at the pull of her stitches. “Oh, very well. But I can feed myself, you know.”

He silently held out the spoon. She tried to reach for it, but in her exhaustion, her hand shook too hard.

Without a word, Lotor gently held the spoon up to her mouth, brushing the edge against her full lip. She hesitated for only a second before she hesitantly opened her mouth, watching him the whole time.

His face relaxed in relief as she ate off the spoon, and then he gently pulled it away from her. “Do you like it, princess?”

Princess—that was another phrase he called Allura Singh sometimes.

Her elfin ears flicked back in surprise of the taste, and her eyes widened as she swallowed. She gave him a pleading look and a noise of delight, and for the first time in a long while, there was a desire in her eyes. To enjoy something in life. To keep living.

The human Lotor smiled, and it was a handsome, relieved smile, despite all the lines of exhaustion and depression in his face. He looked back down, spooning up more of the soup for her. And his heart lightened. “How miserable must we be,” he joked, “to be so glad over soup.”

The woman’s eyes searched his own. “It is not just the soup I am glad for,” she whispered.

Despite his best attempts to hide otherwise, his hand tightened on the spoon, and his eyes began to mist. He tried to say something in return, but words caught in his throat.

* * *

“Was there an Allura in your world?” asked Allura Singh. She and Emperor Lotor were walking in the midst of a great city, which bore the imaginative alterations of thousands who had crossed into the realm. Allura’s eyes were bloodshot from tears, but in her hand, she carried a funnel cake that she had manifested on sheer will alone.

Beside her, the tall, alien Lotor looked down at the funnel cake, licking his fangs in interest of it. “Yes, there was an Allura, whom I loved.”

“Is she here?”

“No.” His voice tightened. “I believe she still lives, for I have traversed the sleeping fields and found only you.” He dared to reach out and stole a small, fried section of the funnel cake, his clawed fingers turning white with powdered sugar.

Allura sputtered, less about the funnel cake and more about the confession. “You say that so casually.”

His blue eyes slid to her. “Princess Allura and I did not…part on a happy note.”

The woman searched his eyes and then pouted. “Why ever not?”

His voice strained. “It was a combination of things. A misunderstanding of great proportion. My blindness to my own corruption via a great power source. Our general mistrust.” He stole another piece of her funnel cake. “These…cakes of funnel are quite good.”

“Funnel cake,” she corrected. “And what was so terrible that it kept you two apart?” She munched on a piece, powdered sugar falling to the gold-covered bricks beneath their feet. Her voice great muffled. “I mean, I thought the Lotor of my world was a jerk. But then I discovered he was not, and we had, um…” she flushed—“a rather good time of it.”

A pull of emotion came over Lotor. He paused for a time, and it made Allura realize that for all of his peace, he still carried a wound within him that had not yet healed. It was not a bitterness, but instead a sadness.

“I fear,” he murmured, “she thought me more than a…jerk, as you say.” He looked young and lost in that moment. “I long to tell her the truth of my actions, for I know she suffers greatly from the consequences of all that happened between us.”

“What do you mean?” Allura asked innocently.

His face tightened. “Many who wake up here have been victims of great war as a result of my…unexpected death.” He looked away, the wind catching his hair. “And I know Princess Allura. I know each soul weighs upon her, and that she tries to carry the responsibility for each one. I do not wish for her to suffer.”

The woman fell silent and then awkwardly said, voice soft, “It’s sweet that you cared for her, even if you did have a falling out.”

Lotor looked down at the golden streets upon which they walked. His white brows knitted. “We were both blinded,” he confessed freely. “We held the universe in our hands and failed our stations at first test. I cannot fault her without faulting myself to the same degree.”

Allura hesitated, biting her lip. There was an odd pattern in his voice. “Did you love her?”

His velvet voice broke. “Yes. I wish for her presence, to tell her the truth and perhaps even reconcile, but I desire that she live a long and happy life. Perhaps, she may yet find a man from the Altean colony who would lighten her heart.” His face twitched in a light pain. “And perhaps she will yet discover the truth of our falling out, and know that, if I had not been so altered by quintessence, I would have told her everything.”

* * *

On the far side of the waking field, the juniberries stretched and twisted, glowing as they reconfigured into the outline of a slender body. The realm was preparing to receive a new soul freed in death. Then the glow expanded, brightening as a star. As the glow slipped away, the form of one Honerva of Daibazaal was revealed, laying among the flowers in sleep, waiting for her soul to reconnect with her restored body.

Though her hair remained white, her markings had been returned to their glory in her prime. Her face was now young and vibrant as she had been before her quintessence corruption.

But she wore the flight suit she had died in.

White locks danced about purple juniberries as the wind blew. She breathed in deeply the scent, the last of her stress lines fading away.

And in the distance, one Emperor Zarkon of Daibazaal looked up, his red eyes widening as he felt the soul of his wife slip into the quantum realm.

He dropped the juniberry flowers he was gathering.

His red cape twisted about him as he struggled up, every fiber in him tightening in adrenaline. “Honerva?” he whispered.

 _At last_ , his soul cried. _At last_.

Ten-thousand years, he had waited for her.

The man leaned against a nearby tree for strength as he stared at her form in the waking field. Her chest still glowed with the light of an unsettled soul—it meant she was still reconfiguring onto the quantum plane.

Tears rose to his eyes in a mix of joy and sorrow.

To see her here, blooming from the juniberries, meant that she had died in life. That his wife, after ten-thousand years of struggle and toil, was finally coming home to rest with him.

“ _You would not recognize her, I think_ ,” Lotor’s exhausted voice echoed in his mind. “ _She is like you were—heavily altered by quintessence. But unlike you, I fear her soul did not die. That she is still…trapped somehow in her corrupted body_.”

“ _Can anyone free her from such unhappiness, my son?_ ”

“ _Voltron may yet do so_.” Lotor had looked down in pain. His wounds were still so fresh at the time. “ _But if there is any semblance of my true mother within her, perhaps she will lay down her life on her own_.”

Zarkon, whose restored body was in its prime as well, felt weakness surge through him at the sight of Honerva among the juniberries.

So peaceful.

And beautiful.

And alone.

Zarkon hesitated to move toward her, fearful of interrupting her soul’s journey into the realm. His eyes burned with tears as he anticipated scenario after scenario of how to greet her. He briefly wondered if her peace were merely an illusion, given how Lotor had entered the realm. His son had woken up in a huff, ripping off the juniberries from his limbs, seething with a demonic hatred of all things. Only the tears in his eyes had revealed that his anger derived from pain. It had taken quintants and quintants for Lotor to calm down, with many souls avoiding him until he stood by himself, crying in the field where he had woken up, at loss of who he was in the greater scheme of reality. Only after the boy had swiped at Zarkon and seethed a slew of curses had his vehemence faltered into sorrow, then acceptance. And then joy for all the wonders of the quantum realm.

Zarkon pressed his lips together as he watched Honerva sleep, committing to memory the sight of her in peace.

Her soul was already thrumming through the surrounding dirt and the life-giving juniberries.

It would not be long before he met his wife again. And no matter what she had done or how hard the world had twisted her, he would open his arms to her.

* * *

Princess Allura stared at the human Honerva in horror and joy and confusion. Then she looked down at the paper with all the strange human numbers and letters. Her eyes were bloodshot and teary. “…A baby?”

The older woman pressed her lips together and nodded.

Allura’s breath hitched. Her hand instinctively slid over her lower abdomen, where she bore several stitches from her minor wounds. “How can that be?” She struggled to inhale shakily. In the two months of time since the death of Lotor in the rift, she had hardly given thought to anything else. She’d been tossed about, beaten down, shook up, thrust across dimensions—

—She had not given thought to her own lack of a cycle, thinking its delay the result of stress.

The paper began to shake in her hand.

She’d tried so hard to forget her time with Lotor in the quintessence field…

Her vision blurred, and the numbers on the paper turned to streaks of black against white. “You are saying I am pregnant. That cannot be. It cannot.”

Honerva maintained her distance with the woman, not having forgotten the steel of her fingers when in a rage. But her expression faltered at the pain in the princess, who still bore the stitches of her injuries and the haunting of her past. “You do not have to believe me,” she said, voice even. “But your own body will confirm it soon enough.”

The princess, isolated from even her own universe, began to break on the bed. Her mind fragmented under the realization that some part of Lotor of the Galra was knitting itself in her womb, having held strong through every damaging blow, every wracking of tears—

That her Lotor was still alive, through her.

Fear and joy overwhelmed her. “I do not know how to be a mother,” she cried softly. Her fingers tightened in the material of her bedsheet. “This cannot be happening.” She was beginning to hyperventilate. “It was once. Only once.”

Honerva’s beautiful face grimaced. She hesitated, as if desiring to reach out or pull away further.

Allura stared up at her, completely raw and vulnerable, face flushed. Her breaths were coming in quick gasps, even as she rubbed her lower abdomen over her womb.

Honerva reached for her hand, her thin and breakable fingers intertwining with the girl’s. “You are displeased, then?” she asked softly.

Of all things, the woman began to sob harder, her elfin ears drooping. She stroked the ruined skin over her womb, careful of her stitches. Her sorrow and happiness stretched a red flush up to the tips of her ears, and she cried, “I thought I had killed him. All of him.” She swallowed back emotion. “And—and now, you tell me, I have been carrying a part of him with me, all along. A child.” Her voice broke. “His baby.”

The princess stared down at herself in an awe.

Her memories left her swallowing hard.

“ _Ngh, princess_ ,” he had moaned in pained ecstasy. He had taken her on the floor of the Sincline ship, the motes of quintessence floating about them in the silence, save for their ragged breaths and the obscenity of their lovemaking. His large hand had sought hers out, even as he thrust against her harder. “ _Come with me. Please_.”

Allura could still feel how widely she had spread her legs for him and how loudly his name had strangled from her lips, knowing they were utterly, blissfully alone.

She suddenly struggled to look up at Honerva, feeling great shame. She was a princess without a planet, without a title, without riches or power. Her body was scarred by debris. She held within her the seed of a deceptive murderer to whom she had spread her legs so carelessly, and she was a beggar, under a roof only by the grace of others.

Honerva leaned forward, tentatively offering her hand in comfort. “Allura,” she murmured.

The younger woman blinked rapidly as she struggled to breathe. She felt distant and confused with herself, looking down at her flat stomach in a mix of utter betrayal—and pure awe.

Honerva’s voice raised in concern. “Allura, do you hear me, child?”

The word child broke her. Objects swam before her in a blur. Her throat tightened so hard that she feared answering the mother in any capacity, knowing that any further sound would turn into a sob. Her chest heaved anyway, pulling her stitches.

She tried to wipe tear after tear from her face.

Her hand shook so hard, she missed her own cheek. She wanted her father so bad—so terribly bad.

Honerva hesitated. Her beautiful face began to grimace as she watched the alien princess break. The tired lines on her face tightened, and her heart cracked. She reached out with her arms, pulled forward by maternal instinct alone.

Allura, in such a state, accepted the hug. Her shaking fingers dug into the simple, warm sari, and she hiccupped, sobbing as she felt Honerva pull her closer. As a mother would.

Honerva’s white brows knitted together. “It will be alright,” she whispered.

The fallen princess’s tears stained the sari across her shoulder. For all of her strength, she found herself leaning on Honerva entirely, falling apart in the mother’s arms. A thin, frail hand came to stroke her hair as she cried.

And the two women stayed that way for some time.

* * *

The next time Lotor Dalir saw the wayward Princess Allura, she was sitting up in bed, wearing a pink sari from his mother. Honerva had helped her bathe and had brushed out her curls. A pink flower from the garden rested against her elfin ear, blooming against her cheek.

Her dark skin seemed paler, and her eyes were bloodshot, but there was a great alertness to her as she tracked Lotor’s movements.

She looked frail lying there.

The man swallowed hard. “I…heard the news,” he whispered, voice tightening. Something in him was so tense and so hopeful at once. His eyes were bloodshot as well. He reached out to her. “Allura.”

Her eyes brightened with tears as she grabbed for his hand.

She had seen the pictures and videos of this man in his previous life, before the death of Allura Singh. He had been mischievous with a dramatic air. She had seen him fawn over Allura Singh in many ways—wrapping her up in surprise embraces, stealing kisses, cheering her on loudly and then storming down a race track as well with his fast machine called a motorcycle. One of the interviews she had found included Lotor Dalir loudly proclaiming a desire to love Allura Singh for the full of eternity.

The man before her was muted, as if life had drained away an intrinsic part of him. But his eyes were an emotional blue—a living river, just like the eyes of the Lotor who had once loved her. Who had believed his own lies so deeply that his eyes had been earnest in every moment.

She squeezed Lotor’s hand back. “I am sorry,” she said softly, “to continue burdening you and your family.” Her voice wavered. “You have all been so kind, even your father for not yet throwing me out.”

Lotor set his other hand over hers, offering a protective shield around her skin. He intertwined his fingers with hers. “I would give you anything you wanted.” His tone carried a hoarse quality to it. He’d shed tears in the recent past. He was trying to be strong for her now. “How do you feel?”

Her elfin ears drooped, and she looked at their intertwined hands. “Not particularly different,” she whispered.

Lotor’s voice was unsteady with pain. “This…child. It is his?”

They both knew who the _he_ was.

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes, tightening his fingers around hers. Then he opened his eyes, and his watery, blue eyes focused upon her with a great seriousness. “I do not know how to get you back to your world. But I would do anything for you,” he declared softly. His breath hitched. “Whatever you need, I am here.”

Allura swallowed hard, biting her lip. She pulled her hand away from him to gently stroke his cheek, in awe of how truly similar he was to the Lotor of her own world. A perfect match in his facial structure and the set of his eyes. She could feel the ache in him—that he longed for his soul match, who was Allura Singh. The light-hearted one. The indomitable one who could make him smile as he was meant to smile. His _moosh-moosh-am_ , as he had called her in his native tongue.

“I have a terrible thing to ask of you,” she whispered.

“Anything, love.” He smiled weakly, but a fear was in him. “Anything at all.”

“…Can you stay here with me? And hold me, for just a time?”

His handsome face broke with emotion. Without words, he opened his arms to her, helping her into a gentle embrace.

She hid her face in his warm shoulder, weakly wrapping her arms around him as she leaned into him in relief. He pressed his nose into the soft curls atop her head, closing his eyes as he lightly stroked her warm skin.

_Thank you._

And despite the shifting insanity of the universe, the two of them found a brief solace resting in each other’s arms.

Allura closed her eyes.

_Thank you._

Lotor, in his exhaustion, eventually fell asleep beside her, his soft breath an enduring puff against her skin, his large hand covering her lower abdomen, his thumb stroking her on occasion, even in sleep.

* * *

Among the juniberries in the quantum realm, Honerva’s white brows twitched. Her slender fingers slid from her lower abdomen, where her restored, youthful body still bore the scar of childbirth. It glowed along with the full of her form.

And then, as the last of her soul slipped back into her body, the glow around her faded, leaving juniberry flowers trailing around her in an arc. She made a soft, sighing sound as her long lashes fluttered open. Her gold eyes opened to a blue sky.

For a tick or two, she was pleasantly disoriented by the prickle of grass against her ear, and the wind brushing her white locks against her cheek. And then she looked about in confusion, her elfin ears flicking back, her gold eyes widening.

Tears rose to her eyes.

She raised a hand to her chest, realizing that something was different. Her hand began to shake as she discovered she still wore the flight suit she had died in while resurrecting the multiverse with Princess Allura.

The princess, it seemed, understood how to act as a capacitor for quintessence. Honerva, however did not know such secrets and so had felt the life draining from her with every restored multiverse, until her eyes closed, and her heart slowed, and in exhaustion, she simply accepted death.

“The quantum realm,” she breathed.

Tears rose in her eyes as she sat in silence among the juniberries, reaching her hand out to stroke the soft, fuchsia petals. Her nerves tingled with the life-giving power within them—that the ancients had been right; the flowers transferred and stored quintessence in the most unique of ways. Perhaps lightning came from the bow of a god, after all, as well.

Honerva raised her face to the sun, feeling the warmth upon her skin as her sharp cheeks streaked with her tears. Her true son had died. The other dimension had fully rejected her. All that she had desired in the end—for nothing.

Her breath hitched, her lithe fingers tightening against the juniberries for strength. She felt raw here in this realm. Her senses felt heightened. Everything felt closer and larger, including the harsh ache in her soul.

She could _feel_ here.

In awe, she pulled her fingers away from the juniberries to touch the tears that ran down her cheek. She had not even cried when Lotor and Zarkon had rejected her in the alternate dimension, or when she had opened the hatch of the Sincline robot and saw her son—

Saw her son—

The distorted body of her son—his perfection twisted into the ugliest visage—

Honerva bowed over, the bones of her spine sticking out against the material of her flight suit, as she hid her face in her hands, tears leaking faster and faster from her. Her breath fluttered into gasps as her sorrow and horror overwhelmed her—and her raw fury that the universe could take so much away from her, and then leave her for dead, a field of paltry flowers her reward for ten-thousand years of trauma and confusion and manipulation.

She pulled her hands from her face to cry openly, grabbing for the juniberries and tearing the petals harshly. The beautiful flowers swung under her violence, their leaves ripping off in her fingernails, the petals crumpling in her palm. An ugly, bald stem remained of the flower she had targeted, its ripped pieces weeping with the living waters of the realm.

She stared at the raw edges, feeling vindication, seeing herself finally reflected within the disruption of the field’s beauty. The wind brushed against her, attempting to dry her tears. The ruined flowers bowed under the weight.

“He was my son,” she whispered shakily, voice halting hard. She ran a hand along the birthing scar she bore beneath her suit. Now fully restored, she could remember the ecstasy with which Lotor had been conceived. She remembered Zarkon’s proud expression softening in awe and joy, his knees faltering to the ground, when she had admitted she was pregnant. “I was supposed to have a _family_.”

And for as much as she damned her own interest in the rift, she could not damn it entirely. Without it, she would have never spoken to Zarkon. Fallen in love with him. Felt his arms around her, which she ached for desperately as she sat there, vision blurred, undone by her losses.

“Honerva?”

The voice was a deep and smooth male voice—soft.

Her heart jumped at the sound of it. She turned her tear-stained face to the sound of the voice, and there by the trees was Zarkon, just as she remembered him. Her vision blurred at his image, and she looked down, wiping her eyes with a shaking hand. “Honerva is dead,” she called to him, voice wavering in defeat. “I do not know my name.”

Something in her response broke the Galran man’s expression. His hesitance broke into worry. His large hand tightened against the limb of the tree against which he leaned. And then he pulled away to move to her.

Her watery, gold eyes narrowed to slits, and she raised her hand. “Do not come near,” she said, voice wavering. “For you will reject me upon closer inspection.” Her breath hitched. “Not even an imaginary Zarkon could accept me.”

 _Psychopath_ , came the unsettling whisper from her memories. Some part of her had always known she was twisted beyond her natural state.

 _Psychopath_ , the Zarkon of her imagination had called her, the projection feeding from the uncorrupted part of her soul who raged in pain at what she had become.

The man before her paused. His dark facial plates glinted in the sunlight as his red eyes widened. He swallowed hard, then held out his hands. His claws were sharp and pointed, but he opened his palms to appear less frightening. “Honerva, I will not reject you.” His voice tightened with pain and longing. “I have waited for you. I have waited for ten-thousand years to see you.”

Honerva inhaled sharply, her thin lips pulling back in a sob as she stared up at him. Her voice sharpened. “Pretending to care is useless. You will turn on me. You always do. Everything does.”

Now that she was fully capable of accessing emotion, she felt the sting of Lotor’s rejection of her—her last memory of her son while he was alive. His handsome face—the perfect union of herself and Zarkon, the shining star of the empire—had been so twisted in hate and disgust, she could not reconcile it with her memories of running her hands over her swollen belly in love and awe.

“Do you not know who I am?” Zarkon asked her softly, searching her eyes.

The woman could not hold his gaze. She looked down where she sat in the grass, depressed, even as the winds blew against her. “If I am in the realm of the dead, then I can only assume that you are the soul of the one I once called beloved.” Her breath hitched again. “But that was long ago, before I became a witch, and before _you_ rejected your memories of me as wife.” Her voice stung with pain.

Zarkon kneeled before her, his red cape fluttering against him and the sharp lines of his shoulders. His eyes searched hers as he tilted up her chin. The woman did not resist him, but instead her gold eyes watered harder at the touch, on the verge of a breakdown.

“I have learned through others what became of my body, and of you,” he murmured to her softly. “My last memory is of holding you in the rift.” His voice, soft only for her, broke hard. “I’d…hope it had worked, when I woke up here without you. I ached when I began to hear the stories, of a tyrant and a high priestess killing all. I am sorry, my love. I am so sorry.” His long fingers curled to stroke her wet cheek. “I know you have suffered.”

She barely managed to look him in the eyes, her depression and listlessness all-encompassing. “Suffered?” she whispered, voice shaking. “The word fails to describe how this universe _betrayed_ me.” Her gold eyes blurred with tears. “How it betrayed us. How can you possibly be so calm.”

Zarkon leaned his forehead against her own, his Galran ridge plates hot against her. He brushed his nose against her own. His thumb stroked the back of her neck, sweeping against her silky, white hair. “Because this is not the end, my love.”

Her small fingers tightened into the free fluttering of his cape for stability. Tears streaked harder down her face. She seemed terribly young and frightened in that moment, leaning against him as her only tether to sanity. “Ten-thousand years of pain,” she whispered. “I did things. So many terrible things. And our son—”

Her voice caught hard in her throat.

She fell apart in his arms, allowing herself to feel her sorrow, the nightmare of Lotor’s distorted, dead body haunting at the corner of her eyes. She could not speak of it.

Zarkon pulled her close, wrapping his long arms around her thin frame. His red eyes closed. “I know, my love,” he whispered to her, stroking her hair. “I know.”

* * *

In the mountains of Iran, one elfin woman sat upon a stone bench in the Dalir estate gardens. A pink sari flitted about her in the hot winds. Bandages still were wrapped around her arms from her various, strange cuts. But her hand lingered over her flat abdomen with a protective strength.

“May I ask,” Princess Allura called softly, “where she is buried? This…counterpart of mine?”

Lotor Dalir did not look up from his work. His hands were covered in mulch and dirt as he sat on the concrete sidewalk, leaning forward to prune his mother’s plants. His voice was tight. “Allura is buried beside her father, in India.” His fingers grasped at weeds, pulling them from the precious flower bed to toss them into a trash bag. His temples were soaked with sweat from exertion, his white hair straggling down his cheeks.

He always seemed to need something to do. Something to keep his hands busy.

The princess’s fingers ticked hopelessly against her abdomen, where her child was knitting itself together, day by day. Her alien eyes were no longer bloodshot with tears, but sad with an ongoing daze. “You do not seem pleased, that she is buried in the land of India alongside her father.”

Lotor Dalir’s hand tightened upon the green shoots of a wild onion, yanking it from the flower bed. His breath halted. “It was the most logical decision.”

“Is India far from here? Does it look like this garden?” Her voice was soft and curious as she stroked her abdomen, her fingers catching on the smooth material of the sari, which glittered royally in the sunlight. “This is a beautiful place.”

The man sat back on the concrete, running a hand across his rough cheek. He streaked dirt down his skin. “India is far enough that I must fly to visit her grave.” He swallowed hard, looking down at his dirty, scratched hands. “I…cannot visit as often as I once did. But I tended her grave every day at one point.” He looked down, wiping his hands on his dark jeans, then pulling up the hem of his shirt to wipe his sweaty brow. His voice muffled. “I worked until it no longer resembled a gravesite, but a garden of life.” His throat tightened. “Where her statue stands.”

The princess searched his eyes. “Is that why you come out here so often, to tend the gardens like a servant would? Because you are used to doing so?” It was strange for her to see any visage of Lotor lower himself to such a menial task.

Lotor’s eyes misted. “It…keeps my mind busy.” And then he ran a hand through his hair. “For a while, anyway.”

“You are so very dedicated to her, even after all this time,” Allura whispered.

He turned away to return to pulling weeds. His voice was watery. “One simply does not…move on easily from loving Allura Singh.” His actions grew more tense as he thrust weeds into the trash bag, his white hair jerked with each movement.

Princess Allura pressed her lips together, her white brows knitting together. “It would pain her, to see you so miserable. For truly, _I_ am pained by it.”

Lotor’s blue eyes squeezed shut, his heart cracking. “I am sorry, princess. I do not wish to upset you.” He inhaled shakily, the sound a sniffle. He shakily returned to pulling a new weed.

Her elfin ears drooped. “That’s—that’s not what I meant. It’s simply that…over the last several days, I fear I’ve cried on your shoulder more times than I can count. And yet you do not ask of such from me.”

He lowered his head, his white hair streaming down his cheek. “Your existence, love, is more of a comfort than you know.” He turned to face her, his blue eyes glassy. “I did not think I would ever see Allura’s living image again. Even if we are of different worlds, I am…beyond relieved to know that she is alive in you.”

The Princess Allura of Altea swallowed hard. Her own eyes misted. “I am relieved as well by you,” she whispered. “But I long to see you smile, or to hear you laugh. Such unhappiness does not suit your handsome face.”

Lotor’s white brow quirked at the inanity of her comment. He sniffled. “Are you admitting I am handsome, princess? Despite your complaints of my rounded ears and that I look odd without fangs and purple skin?”

Her full lips stretched. “Yes, even without those things.” She patted her abdomen. “I know a handsome face when I see one.”

At that, Lotor smiled. It was a small twitch of his lips, but a genuine one that lit up his misty eyes. “Ah, you sound much like the Allura I know, when you tease me like that.”

“Did she tease you often?”

“Yes.” His smile brightened, showing off his white teeth and the way his canines were just a bit too sharp still.

Princess Allura’s heart skipped at the sight. She looked away suddenly, flustered, her cheeks tinging pink. She’d longed for Emperor Lotor to gaze at her like that. Her scarred fingers tightened into the material of her pink sari. “I am delighted by your tales of her—that you two were truly in love, without all the massive problems the Lotor of my world and I faced.”

Oddly, a hoarse sort of huff escaped him. It was as close to a genuine laugh as he could muster, but it made him seem even more handsome. “Oh, we had our problems, in the beginning. I am certain if she were as strong as you, I would already be in the ground.”

She tilted her head. “What did you do to earn Allura Singh’s scorn? And how did you win her over?”

Lotor’s face tightened with a pained fondness and hilarity. “She thought me a terrible man—someone who would disrespect women and force himself on others.”

Her blue and purple eyes widened. “Truly?”

He sighed. “It was a great misunderstanding. I’d…been with many women, in the past. But I’d never forced myself on anyone.” He gave her a weary look that was only mildly amused. “It took quite a while for her to accept that I was truly not a dangerous man.”

Allura leaned forward. “And you still loved her?”

Lotor looked down, and then smiled in a watery way. “I loved her the moment she threw a can at my head.”

* * *

Zarkon Dalir, in large part, avoided the strange Princess Allura. The alien traversed the halls of his family’s estate as a wraith in pink, her white curls fluttering about her as the beads and coins on her sari clinked with her every step. She was the living embodiment of all that the Dalirs had lost. Zarkon found it difficult to be in her presence.

But that evening, as he sat at the fireplace, he saw her walk toward him, and he did not get up to leave. Instead, he remained in his chair, reading the newspaper as if she did not exist.

Her sweet alto voice, so like Allura’s and yet patterned so differently, halted, “May I sit before the fire with you?”

He did not look up. “I am not your keeper, daughter of Alfor.”

Princess Allura’s fingers tightened in the sari she had borrowed from Honerva. Allura Singh had borrowed the same one once, after she and Lotor had been found making love in the gardens and had torn her shirt. “Did you call Allura Singh ‘daughter of Alfor?’”

“Yes.” His voice strained as he turned the page of his newspaper. He feared to look up, but he saw the flair of pink fabric as the woman sat in the other chair. His peripheral vision caught the protective way she seemed to hold her abdomen, now that she knew she was pregnant.

The woman bit her lip nervously.

Zarkon could feel her staring at him.

She tried again. “You are very different from the Zarkon I knew,” she said softly. “And yet so similar as well.” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to thank you for allowing me to stay in your home, and for clothing me and letting me eat from your table.”

His dark eyes slid up to her. A pain worked into his aged face. “I had no choice.” And then he turned the page again, attempting to focus on some article about oil and quintessence prices.

Allura inhaled shakily, wringing her hands. “I, um, I rather wanted to chat with you, if you do not mind me taking some of your time.”

“If you are Allura in any capacity, you would speak regardless of whether I minded.” His voice turned dry. There was a small hitch of humor and a great wave of pain at the same time.

The princess managed an awkward smile at that, her white brows furrowing. “You seem to maintain such a frustration with Allura Singh. Did you care for her in life, or did she displease you?”

The man set down his newspaper. His long, scarred fingers smoothed the paper in an apprehensive way. “She displeased me greatly, at every turn.” His handsome face twitched as he dared to look at the princess in the eye. “Even when I finally accepted that she might become my daughter-in-law, she then died. I am most displeased by this.”

The princess could not hold his gaze, her eyes watering. “So you did care for her.”

“More than I should have.”

The bandages on her arms crinkled slightly as she readjusted. “I am very sorry for your loss.”

Zarkon’s dark eyes hardened, measuring her for a time. And then the energy left him. “It is no matter. For you will soon leave as well, back to the world you came from.” He looked down, face in a twist as he smoothed the newspaper again. “And this will all be a strange dream.”

Princess Allura swallowed hard. “The truth is, sir, I cannot return from where I came. I would require coordinates—a greater understanding of where I am in the larger multiverse.” Her fingers ran over her lower belly. “And there are risks associated with such a jump. I fear what would happen if I attempted it.”

He tilted his head. “Are you asking my permission to stay longer?”

She nodded. “I could offer you—your family—something in return for the trouble, while I attempt to right myself to this world.”

Zarkon searched her. “What would you offer us, besides an ongoing reminder of what we have lost?”

Princess Allura’s eyes began to mist. “I think…if her body has not yet turned to dust, I can restore your world’s Allura Singh to life. I want to _try._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another opportunity for more wild Lotura shenanigans, haha. I hope you liked this next section! Please drop me a line and let me know if you'd like to read more. (And I do promise, I've been working in the background on other stories; but since I had so much of this one written, I figured I may as well update it, haha.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the awesome people for reviewing last time: 
> 
> Lunar Magnolia: Bless you, dear!! I always appreciate your support! 
> 
> Brynn: Guh, thankie so much for your kind words! It's definitely an exercise to write crossover!Lotura and keep them sounding both...in-character and yet distinguished from each other?? loll. As always, your extended reviews put a smile on my face! 
> 
> tuonetar: Ahhh omg bless your tears! I really like to try writing cathartic things, so I appreciate that you feel the same! I hope your veins are okay from jamming this into them, though. haha. Thanks again! 
> 
> Espanholina: Thank you so much for your review! Your support means a lot! (I really love a soft!Zarkon too, haha.) And you ask a really good question, about how in the world are they going to explain a resurrected Allura Singh, haha. We'll definitely find out as the story goes on! <3

The quantum realm expanded endlessly in all directions, constantly reshaping with the imaginative additions of its newest tenants. Trees hung upside down from waterfalls. Golden roads converged with rainbows.

A Galran symbol was emblazed upon a mountain, alongside the old markings of an Altean king.

Allura Singh tilted her head in curiosity as the winds guided her along. Her dark fingers tightened against Lotor’s hand in happiness. “Oh, what pretty symbols.”

The alien man’s face stretched with a handsome smile, in delight of her innocence. His fangs glimmered in the sun. “These are the lands my father designed,” he said. There was a tinge of pride in him. “Along with an old friend of his—whose face, I think, would offer you much joy.”

Allura had learned that this Lotor’s father was alien as well, and her curiosity had piqued at the thought of meeting a reptilian-like Zarkon. She turned around, her flyaways stroking her cheeks. “Oh, what friend is that?”

His large hand squeezed hers lightly. “His name is Alfor.”

The winds surged between them as her eyes widened. “Alfor? Truly?”

“Yes, Miss Singh.” His voice softened in a way that mimicked how Lotor Dalir would speak to her in the midst of sunsets and soft laughter. “Though he is fully Altean.”

The woman began to tug on his long arm, eyes big and demanding. “Can I speak to him? Is he here, now? Does he look like me?”

The alien man fondly grabbed for her hand. “Yes,” he laughed. “The resemblance is uncanny—he would pass as your father, even as human as you are.” Then his eyes widened as Allura began to drag him along. His long legs nearly stumbled with the effort to keep up with her.

It seemed she had Princess Allura’s innate ability to toss him about like a wind. He found he did not mind it so much, in her hyper-state of wonder.

“Show me where he is,” she demanded. “Please, oh, please.” Her head turned each way in joyful apprehension. “I’ve not seen my father’s face in years. And I do not mind if he has purple skin like you or claws—I would know him.”

Lotor corrected, “Such features on me are from my Galran blood, not Altean.”

“No matter,” Allura begged. “Do you know where he is?”

The man tightened his hand upon hers to guide them down the path to the mountain with Altean markings. “Yes, Miss Singh. Just beyond these trees here. He has been spending his recent days learning to perfect the art of designing…natural structures.”

She clung to him close, a noise of excitement and worry sounding from the back of her throat. “Oh, I cannot wait. Do you think he will recognize me? Do I look alright?”

Lotor looked down at her, his blue eyes roving her flushed cheeks and bright gaze and white flyaway curls. “You look perfect,” he murmured, his voice softening with a fondness.

She blushed prettily, biting her lip. And then she looked away.

As the trees thinned out, a small valley came into view at the base of the maintain. Up ahead, she saw a man. He was in his prime and wore a royal tunic and tall boots, his white hair straggling down his cheeks as he held out his hands, conjuring something in the field. His expression was set in great determination, and his hands glowed blue. As the ticks passed, the smallest bud of a tree began to rise from the dirt, and then it stretched out, yawning wide with limb after limb.

Allura’s eyes widened as the glowing tree thickened and grew, sprouting great leaves—and then—

“—Coconuts?” she whispered in delight, her eyes lighting up.

The man in the distance, and the tree itself, lost its glow. He wiped his forehead and then stepped back, setting a hand on his hip as he inspected his work, looking satisfied.

“Alfor,” called Lotor, his voice merry. “Turn your head from landscaping, and behold this most familiar face, who woke up among the juniberries, at last.”

The white-haired man turned at that.

And then he froze.

King Alfor of Altea stared at the beautiful human woman before him, and his knees weakened. For a time, he said nothing. His eyes misted hard at the sight of her. “Allura?” he breathed in awe and surprise. He failed to breathe. “By the _stars._ ”

Allura Singh glanced back at him, eyes wide. The sound of his voice was as pure and crisp as any memory she had of her true father, and the intonation and soothing lilt shook something deep inside her. “Father,” she whispered in awe. She gazed over his familiar face and the cut of his beard, looking past the elfin ears and alien markings and generally strange clothes.

Alfor Singh’s image was perfectly preserved in every line of the king.

And then his youthful face split with a wide, tearful smile, his elfin ears flicking back in joy. “Allura—!”

He reached to her and pulled her into a great embrace.

Tears rose to Allura eyes as she felt the arms of her father for the first time in a decade. This man was every bit like the father she knew, down to the way he embraced her and how he smelled of peppermint. A joy reverberated through her, and her fingers tightened into the tunic on his back, clinging to him in want of his fatherly love.

He squeezed her tight. Then he pulled away, searching her face, stroking her cheek. His hands were calloused and warm. “Look at you,” he cried in a mix of joy and sorrow. “I am not from your universe, but I see my Allura in you. What a comfort you are, my dear. How I have longed to see her again.”

She managed a watery smile. “I’ve missed my father as well.”

King Alfor stroked her face, swallowing hard. His dark face streaked with tears, his blue Altean marks glistening. “I met the man you call father, with whom I share my appearance.” He smiled in a watery way. “He loved you so much. So very much. Our heart is full for our daughter.”

Allura broke a bit as she stared at him in great longing, seeing her father echo out from his too-bright eyes.

“I hope you did not suffer in your arrival here,” he said softly, looking her over for trauma of any kind.

She leaned into his hand. “I do not even remember how I got here. Do not cry on my account.” She weakly smiled. “And I have had the most helpful and wonderful guide.”

Alfor’s elfin ears flicked once more. “Have you now?” He slid his eyes to the side, to where Lotor was standing to the side. His voice raised in a tease. “Lotor, pay no mind to the compliments Allura gives you. I would hate for your head to swell.”

The younger man huffed lightly, flinging his long, white hair over his shoulder. “No doubt in jealousy that I have been her guide, and not you.” There was an airy tone within him, suggesting the two ribbed each other quite often. But Lotor’s eyes were restless in curiosity. “Is my father not here with you? I had hoped that Allura would meet him.”

Alfor’s joy dampened, and a spark of pain slipped through his contentment. “He has gone to the fields of the juniberries,” he said, voice hesitating, as if withholding information. “I fear he will not return for a time yet. But he would rejoice to meet a grown Allura, I am certain of it.”

The woman tapped her fingers together. “I have heard he is a…Galran? Do I have that correct?”

The king beamed at her in pride. “Yes, Allura. Perhaps not quite how you might know him, if we are all humans in your world. He is rather hard-plated compared to humans.”

“But your habits seem the same,” Allura said lightly. “Why, my father loved the taste of coconut, and here you are, conjuring a coconut tree.”

Alfor’s eyes lit up in delight. “Ah, yes. My latest experiment, based on his memories of them.”

Lotor’s voice drew closer as he walked to them, inspecting the coconut tree. He lightly poked at its bark. “It seems quite steady enough,” he murmured. “But…” He looked up, his yellow sclerae narrowing. “Is the fruit of it within those hard shells above?”

“Yes,” the king said. He quirked a brow, and something terribly mischievous overcame him. “I do believe your father’s skull might be able to crack a coconut naturally, if we were to toss them with enough force.”

Lotor paused, voice straining. “You are attempting to turn my father into a…coconut cracker?”

“Of course. He will enjoy it as well, I am sure.” Alfor waved his hand. “It is certainly not the most ridiculous experiment I have performed with him as my test subject.”

Allura giggled, her face twisting in delight of this strange king, who carried her father’s airs and sense of play. She wiped her face of tears, daring to say, “What happiness you have here, to be among friends and to manifest coconut trees out of nothing.”

Alfor smiled handsomely, but there was a sadness in him as well. “It keeps me out of trouble, yes. I’ve been rather hoping to spread a bit of cheer about. So many sad faces have entered this realm recently.”

The woman hesitated. “Have you seen any version of my mother?” 

The man’s lips pressed together. “I have,” he admitted softly. He reached out and brushed a flyaway lock behind her ear. “My Melenor waited long enough to see me, but she is a free spirit, without my burdens.” His fingers fell away. “I have caused so much grief with my actions, I feel I shall remain here for quite some time yet.”

Lotor turned to them, still inspecting a small piece of bark he’d pulled off the coconut tree. “It is difficult to leave this place,” he murmured in agreement, running his fingers over the unique lines in the bark. “My other counterparts agree.”

Allura turned to him. “Other counterparts?” she echoed curiously. She tilted her head. “Do you mean to say we are not the only two worlds with an Allura and a Lotor?”

His eyes slid up to her, a mix of emotions in him, but among them, a peace. “There are many,” he said softly. “Some…happier than others.”

“Ah, yes. I do recall Sincline, long ago—that poor, disturbed boy,” Alfor sighed. “I do not believe I have ever seen one so upset about their own heritage before. His breakdown almost rivaled your own, Lotor.”

The younger man’s ears drooped. “I was not so far gone,” he argued.

Alfor quirked a brow.

Lotor’s face oddly flushed, and he looked away.

In the silence, Allura’s face tightened. “Oh, but I do not want for any version of Lotor to be sad. Tell me, is that version well now?”

Her father grabbed for her hand and squeezed it lightly. “Fear not, Allura. The last I knew, he had returned to the juniberries. And he wore a smile on his face as he fell asleep, back into a new life.”

* * *

When Princess Allura revealed her intentions to resurrect Allura Singh, Lotor Dalir fell quiet. He was sitting at the table, and he covered his mouth with his hands. Instead of expressing great joy or disbelief, he eyed her with a critical, worried stare.

She stood there, frail and pale, as she looked from a crossed-armed Honerva to Lotor. “Have I displeased you with my suggestion? Do you think it impossible for me?”

There was a great pause. Zarkon’s dark eyes swiveled from her to his son.

Lotor’s hands slipped from his face as he said, voice halted, “Knowing what you are and the world from which you hail, I do not question your ability.” He hesitated. His handsome face carried an exhausted rawness to it, the lights of the kitchen catching the darkness of the bags under his eyes. “But…what is the cost of it?”

Her alien eyes searched his in confusion. “The cost?”

He pressed his lips together, his white brows furrowing. “There are universal laws—energy exchanges and chemical processes associated with death and decay.” He stared at her in increasing worry, haunted. “You would have to reverse such things, by transferring energy from an equivalent source.”

The beads and coins of her pink sari jingled as she ran her hand over her abdomen. “Yes, this is true.”

“And—and the sheer implications, of the same person existing twice in the same dimension…science would suggest one of you would—”

He stood up suddenly, his mind racing a mile a minute. His voice broke. “This is suicide.” He struggled for words. “Your life for hers.”

Princess Allura’s fingers tightened into the material of her sari. “Not…exactly.”

“Then your child’s life?” he whispered, narrowing his eyes in pain. “Even if it did not kill you, you speak of a _massive_ energy transfer. Is such an attempt even safe for either of you? What guarantee do you have that _this_ universe can handle what you can do in other worlds?”

She blinked. “I, um—” Her white brows knitted together, and she looked down, feeling strange and confused. “I thought you would appreciate my offer.”

“I would give almost anything to see my Allura again,” he said, voice breaking. “But…” He wiped his eyes, looking stressed. The hope of Allura Singh returning to him hung like a black cloud in his worries for Princess Allura’s safety. “I fear something terrible would happen to you.”

The princess’s eyes misted as she stared at him. “Why does it matter to you, what happens to me?”

The question was softly spoken. Hesitant.

His gaze met hers, raw and vulnerable. “Because you are not interchangeable with Allura Singh.” His voice shook with a righteous passion. “You are as _every bit_ as precious as she is, and you carry a second life within you as well.” He blinked, and he softened. “I am rather fond of you, you know.”

The confession, that he truly cared, even though she was different from his Allura, made her vision blur. She swallowed back hard emotion, her hands trembling. “I am fond of you as well.” Her ears flicked back as she turned. “Of all of you. I want to repay you for your hospitality and kindness, and I…I have many abilities that I wish to use for your benefit.” She blinked, and tears rose to her eyes. “I nearly destroyed an entire multiverse with my mistakes. But you have taken me in as one of your own, even with my pointed ears and all the crying I have done and—” she flushed, thinking of Honerva tending her wounds, or Lotor holding back her hair as she vomited from morning sickness. “And, well, the least I could do is return to you what you have lost, while it is still possible.”

Honerva’s gold eyes met hers. “And the risks?”

Princess Allura turned to her. The bandages on her arms looked stark against the pink of her borrowed sari. She gently reached out to a dying plant in the middle of the table. Her thin, scarred fingers touched a brown leaf and began to glow. The leaf took on the purplish light she emitted, and its edges uncurled, and its stem raised, and a healthy, veiny green began to glimmer. “As long as a thread remains,” she said softly, voice wavering, “I can restore the dead without significant effect to myself. And truly, I restored entire planets once before, without dying.”

She pulled her lithe hands away from the plant, which vibrantly sparkled with new life.

Allura’s breath hitched. “Lotor, _my_ Lotor, led me to where I learned the secrets of life. And he is gone now—his body lost. I cannot undo or fix what has happened to him. But I _can_ fix this world.” Her eyes flickered to Lotor. Her voice broke. “I want to make you happy.”

The handsome man pressed his lips together. He wiped his eyes again, staring at the restored plant upon the table. Then he critically searched the way her hands trembled from the effort of bringing the dead plant back to life. “Does it hurt you to do this?”

The princess shook her head, then added, “I anticipate feeling only very exhausted after it. Perhaps hungry as well.”

“And the child?”

She tapped her fingers on her abdomen lovingly, and she managed to weakly smile through her tears. “This baby survived two months of war and a cosmic blast, and its life force thrives with a light that rivals my own. I feel it is made of sterner stuff than even I am. Truly, all will be well. I promise you.”

Lotor inhaled shakily. For the first time, he dared to imagine Allura Singh awakening upon a bed, her sweet eyes focusing on his own…her calloused fingers reaching up to stroke his face, and her soft voice whispering, “ _Good morning.”_ And then her fingers would poke him mischievously. 

He swallowed hard. He shakily ran a hand through his hair, desiring to feel Allura Singh’s hair.

He suddenly flashed back to her funeral, where he had fallen to his knees as they’d lowered her into the earth.

Lotor’s face broke as he stared at Princess Allura. His hands trembled against the table, and he pulled them away, leaving a sweaty, nervous imprint. His fingers dug into the material of his tunic, over his heart. He aged hard in that moment as his expression tightened in a mix of emotions. “Do you truly mean you can bring her back? So freely?”

The princess smiled through her tears. “Yes.”

The man raised his face to the lights, which caught the tears in his eyes. For a time, he seemed as if he would express a great disbelief with her. With everything. And then he let out an incredulous exhale. “Is there anything you are not good at, Allura?”

She nervously twisted a finger in one of her curls—a habit she shared with Allura Singh. She managed a watery, nervous laugh. “Well, based on the lack of a life I had in my previous world, and the death of Allura here, it seems I am rather not good at living.”

Zarkon choked on his glass of water. Honerva huffed in amusement.

Lotor stared at her, taking her at her word. “Then we shall fix that,” he declared. “And you will live as the queen that you are. Whatever you desire, I will make it happen for you.”

The pregnant woman looked down. Her pretty face flushed in delight of his words, but her heart cracked open. “I do not need to live like a queen,” she whispered, thinking of her father and then of the Voltron paladins. She had lost two whole families. “More than anything, I simply want to belong.”

Her voice cracked hard on the word _belong_ , even as she tried to smile.

A huge wave of emotion crashed against her, the crack in her heart breaking open. It was an ugly wound, scarred over from the loss of all she had known, and then the knowledge that resurrecting Allura Singh would result in her own progressive loss of relevancy. That she was in a world where ultimately, she was a stranger. An unwanted puzzle piece.

A universal mistake.

Lotor saw her turmoil, and he reached out to her on instinct. “Allura.” He moved to her as if driven by gravity itself, his white hair a flicker about his shoulders. His long fingers intertwined within her own, and he gently pulled her to him. His free hand moved to stroke her cheek, in awe of her Altean markings and the life in her.

She trembled at his soft touch, her tears slipping down her face. She tightened her fingers on his, finding comfort in the familiar lines of him. “I’m sorry—I do not know what came over me.” She sniffled, her pretty cheeks flushing pink in embarrassment from her falter. “I cry at the smallest things now.”

Lotor wrapped her up in a tight embrace, leaning his worn cheek against her temple. His velvet voice was a muffled vibration into her hair. “Do not apologize for tears.” His hand on the small of her back rubbed circles against her.

Allura leaned against him, breaking slightly at the steady sound of his heartbeat. Her breath hitched, and she tightened her fingers into the warmth of his shirt.

Lotor Dalir, and his parents, and their ancient estate with its beautiful gardens, and the borrowing of pink saris—all of it was rightfully Allura Singh’s. None of it belonged to the once-renowned Princess Allura of Altea, who ruined everything she touched and ruined herself in the process—her birthright a fallen planet, her legacy the soon-to-be birth of a murderer’s child, her riches entirely borrowed.

But her heart ached as she dared to believe that perhaps Lotor’s offered comfort was for _her_ , and not simply because she shared Allura Singh’s face. That he was genuine when he said she was not interchangeable.

She tried to imagine her Lotor saying such things. Instead, she recalled only his vehemence and the utter hate and distain with which he had attacked her. The dissonance made her tearful, and she clung to Lotor in a desperate attempt to wipe the memory from her mind. “I am sorry,” she cried softly, leaning against him, her voice muffled by his shirt. He was so human. So kind. He did not deserve a ruined, miserable beggar hanging off of him. “I am sorry.”

The man tightened his embrace, glancing worriedly at his father. His free hand stroked down the princess’s curls protectively. “Do you not think you were meant to be here?”

Allura did not respond, simply breathing in the spicy cologne of his scent as she struggled to hold back more tears. Her body trembled with the effort.

Honerva sighed from where she sat, and she stood up. She pulled off the blanket from around her own shoulders, revealing her dark purple, simple robes. She said nothing as she moved forward and gently placed the blanket over Allura’s cold shoulders. Lotor, even as he continued to hold Allura in his arms, helped to tighten the blanket over her.

The older woman swallowed hard, looking awkward. “You are not Allura Singh,” she said slowly, reaching out to smooth it over the princess’s arm, “but the simple physics of your arrival here would suggest that this is not a mistake.” Her voice halted suddenly with an emotion. “Even if you could not bring Allura Singh back to life, you would always be welcome in our halls.”

The princess’s fingers tightened into the rich material of the blanket. She looked frail in doing so, as if moving would break her.

She dared to raise her reddened, teary face to Zarkon, who had remained silent. She searched him, expecting exhaustion and irritation—perhaps a demand that she resurrect Allura Singh immediately to justify taking their resources.

But the man’s aged face was tight with emotion as well. He seemed as if he would say something heartfelt for a time, but then he grumped and turned his face away, moving to flip the switch for the coffee pot on the granite counter. “You bother me less than Allura Singh,” he declared, voice rough. “If she is to return, then I will need you to keep me sane from her antics.”

Lotor snapped his eyes to his father, his jaw dropping. “Father.”

The older man’s eyes had misted with emotion, but in him was a spark of mischief—and of hope, that he would be accosted by Allura Singh once more, and that this Princess Allura would remind him that Singh was simply just young.

He raised his large hand. “These halls would be too silent, without you or your child to wander them.”

The princess’s breath hitched. And her pretty face twisted with a sob, her elfin ears flicking back with emotion.

* * *

Back in the quantum realm, the alien Lotor had turned away from Alfor and Allura to allow them time to themselves. His heart had lightened at the sight of them, knowing that his own Princess Allura had ached for the return of her family, and that Alfor had sighed several times on occasion, thinking about his daughter.

Lotor’s deep inhale was a happy one, his soul glimmering bright with the joy of peace—and that even if he could not speak to Princess Allura, he had met some version of Allura who found him tolerable.

But as he wandered through the trees of the nearby forest, his breath caught in his throat, and he froze.

In the distance came two shadows—his father, with his cape, and then a slim woman who fit well within the outline of Zarkon.

Lotor’s eyes widened as he stared at his mother. He backstepped in surprise, nearly stumbling over a tree root, only to catch himself.

The woman looked frail, her eyes bloodshot with tears as she paused in her walk, awaiting his judgement. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she gazed upon him, her neck craning up hard at his great height. But she did not reach out for him, even though her hands ached to do so. “Lotor?” Her voice wavered hard.

He did not move, save for the wind brushing through his hair, ruffling his locks. His blue eyes remained wide at the sight of her, as if he had been both anticipating and dreading such a moment.

His fist clenched.

The woman flinched, her tears slipping down her face with the action.

And then his fist unclenched, and he breathed out a great, shaky sigh. But his velvet voice remained halted. “Tell me who you are, and how you arrived in this realm of healing.”

Honerva’s face twisted in agony. She opened up her palms, which carried crescent indentations from the claws that still distorted her image. She held her hands out to him. “In life, I was your mother. But the rift…harmed me.” Her eyes watered. “For as many memories as I have of you, I fear you have never met me.”

His elfin ears flicked back in pain, and he backstepped, his face twisting. “You are correct,” he whispered. “I do not know you.”

She blinked and looked down. She stroked her lower abdomen, as if in desire for comfort. A return to happier times. “I know what….I did,” she said, voice straining. “For ten-thousand years. I do not recognize myself in my own memories.”

Lotor’s eyes were tired. “I would hope not.”

Honerva tentatively stepped forward, breath hitching. “Please understand, it began so innocently.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I started manipulating quintessence because your father and I—we could not conceive. I _longed_ for a child with him. But I needed…help.” She blinked rapidly. “I fell to my knees when I realized I carried you. I ached to hold you in my arms.”

Lotor blinked, and his eyes began to mist, his throat tightened. “I am aware.” He looked to his father, who had set his hand upon Honerva’s shoulder. “I have heard the stories, that you once desired a child.”

The mother broke, her lips pulling back in a sob. Words failed her, for she had no excuse for what she had done in the midst of her obsession with quintessence. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am sorry for what I became.”

There was a fear in her, that he would reject her again. That she would fall to the ground and break right there, before the full of the realm.

The perfect visage of Lotor—fully restored in a pinnacle of youth, so utterly different from the spent corpse in the Sincline ship—turned away. His white hair swished with him like a river. She heard his breath hitch. “Then forgive me as well,” he whispered shakily. “For I see your face and at present associate only a witch with it.”

Honerva stilled. Zarkon’s hand tightened upon her shoulder.

Defeat crunched her inward, the proud lines of her body sinking in as she bowed forward, in doing so, mimicking her own posture as the once-Haggar. In her corrupted life, she would have demanded his love, claiming entitlement over it. But in that moment, the mother fell silent. And then she nodded, tears slipping down her face.

Zarkon stepped forward, brows knitted in pain. “My son.”

Lotor raised his hand to quiet him, giving him a warning glance. “Allow me this,” he pleaded. Then he turned back to his mother, swallowing hard. “I see your Altean marks are no longer corrupted, and that you carry true emotion in your eyes. But your face haunts me, Honerva of Daibazaal.” His voice broke. “Your face has caused me great pain. I do not think happy thoughts when I see you.”

Honerva’s elfin ears drooped as she remained silent, staring at the son she had longed to hold in her arms.

The young man pressed his lips together and then said hesitantly, “But I have learned much, being in this realm of peace.”

Her gold eyes watered, seeing he carried no ill will or bitterness. Only sadness.

“One day,” Lotor declared, his velvet voice softening, “Perhaps you will prove to me who my mother truly is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks all for joining me on this story today. I chose to update Quantum Entanglement for Lotura Week 2020 Day 4 – Dianthus: Healing / Rebirth (and also because I already had this part finished and got a really nice ask on tumblr last night to update this story, haha). Happy Lotura week, all! Please let me know if you’d like to read more!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time: LunarMagnolia, GrapeIcies, Espanholina, and Sophtt! 
> 
> LunarMagnolia: Bless your tears and your reviews, and your wonderful art as well! Thank you so much for all of your support. It means so much! 
> 
> GrapeIcies: Thank you for partaking in this food, haha! I hope you continue to enjoy! 
> 
> Espanholina: I hope you had a great Lotura Week! And guh omg, yeah—the show did not particularly reconcile Allura’s depressive and lonely behaviors. I really hope to work on that within this story. Thank you again for all of your support! 
> 
> Sophtt: Ahh thank you so much! And I’ll admit, I’m letting the story write itself, so I’m a bit of a passenger as well in terms of plot, haha. The concept of Princess Allura resurrecting Singh just flowed out of nowhere lol. Thank you again for your review!

Early in the morning, Zarkon Dalir wandered to the great thresholds leading to the outside balcony of his estate. It was there, in the foyer, that he found one Princess Allura, wearing an old sundress of Honerva’s, her white curls piled atop her head. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing at the tiles with a hand brush and a bucket of water. She stopped only on occasion to breathe, as if out of shape, and to clutch at her lower abdomen. She still had a flat stomach, but she suffered pains on occasion as her body adjusted.

Zarkon’s brows angled up in alarm at the sight of her, and his eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

The princess flinched, snapping her head up to him, her white curls bouncing. She appeared mildly frightened by his sharp tone. “Oh.” Her hand shakily fell from her stomach, and she stumbled up into a stand. “Zarkon.” The white of her sundress flared in the light from the glass doors. Her cheeks flared pink as well.

His voice hardened. “Why are you on the floor like a maid?”

Allura’s voice was watery as she stood there, looking guilty. “My apologies.” She looked down in a turmoil of emotion. Sweat beaded at her brow, and she seemed a bit breathless. “I…did not know anyone else was awake.”

There was a great pause between them as he beheld her critically, eyeing the tired lines of her body and the bags under her eyes and the dirt on her hands and knees. Her worn image inspired him to move forward, his aged face tightening.

He gently grabbed onto her dirty hands. “You do not lower yourself to clean my estate." 

Her fingers were raw with her exertion and shook with exhaustion. The foyer was spotless. “I just want to work,” she admitted softly, looking down in embarrassment. “I fear I am anxious in the midst of the universe not ending every day.” She swallowed hard. “And you have all offered me so much that I fear I can never repay it, even as we await preparations to travel to India.” Her eyes watered with strange tears. “Allowing me to stay here, clothing me, feeding me—”

The father huffed, eyeing the redness of her palms. “You say you are a princess in your world, and yet you clean as a servant.”

“I do not know what else to offer,” she whispered. “I know war, and alchemy.” She blinked. “I do not know how to create something of use to you, or how to bake, or garden, or…” Her face twisted uneasily, and she fell silent for a time before adding softly, “But I can clean. It is not so difficult, for I have done many such mundane things before.”

The man with Zarkon’s face pulled away from her, releasing her dirty hands. “Come with me,” he demanded. “You will wash those hands of yours in the sink, and then I will teach you what I learned while I was healing from a crash. I believe you will find the skill useful for the future.”

“Oh,” she pleaded, eyes wide. She followed along, the sash of her white sundress catching the light. She appeared as a strange ghost following him. “I wish to be useful. Tell me what skill this is. And a crash? Did you fall from the sky as well, long ago? For truly, sir, you are still most imposing for a human—I am uncertain if that is what you are—”

He huffed to hide his amusement.

* * *

A short time later, Honerva found them sitting by a fireplace, with Allura’s eyes narrowed in concentration and tongue sticking out as Zarkon guided her hands to make a knitted loop. The knitting needles were awkward in her hands, but her eyes were lit with delight.

Zarkon’s scarred face lifted up in a proud smile as he pulled his hands away. “Yes, that is how it is done.”

“…How delightful this is,” Princess Allura cooed, her elfin ears perked in interest as she awkwardly turned the needles once more. “I can see my progress as I go, even. Do you see it?”

“I do see it,” came Zarkon’s gruff but pleased response. “You are a quick study, daughter of Alfor. But I would expect nothing less.”

The mother leaned against the wall in silence, her purple robes lightly fluffing out with the action. Her gold eyes softened as she wrapped her arms around herself. The sunlight made her husband look otherworldly alongside the elfin princess, for whom he had silently worried over the last several days. 

“ _My love_ ,” he had murmured to her, voice straining, “ _this woman seems two seconds from tears at any given time. It is…most disturbing to see any Allura so broken. I do not know how to fix it._ ”

“ _Is that a fatherly instinct I hear from you?_ ” Honerva had reached up to stroke his sharp cheek and his soft, peppery beard. Her smooth tone lightened in a tease. “ _Desiring to fix her misery as you desire to save our son?_ ”

The man had huffed, then leaned his cheek into her thin fingers. He’d closed his eyes. “ _Do not tell her that,_ ” he said, voice gruff and petulant. “ _Or else Alfor’s ghost might yet laugh at me for caring, after all that has taken place._ ”

Honerva had laughed lightly, but she’d whispered to him, “ _I am certain Alfor would not laugh, but would shed tears, that you are the godfather you had once promised to be_.”

Now, the mother stared at the image of her husband, her heart cracking open. She lightly cleared her throat to announce her presence. “And what is this?” she called mildly. “A knitting party, without me? Zarkon, how dare you.”

His dark eyes looked up, widening in surprise, then narrowing with a soft playfulness. "It was a necessary betrayal." 

“Honerva,” the princess said happily, “Zarkon is showing me how to knit a blanket for my baby.” The blue and purple yarn was gnarled in several knots, but she smiled with a happiness that inspired an ache in Honerva’s bones. “Look at how far I have come!”

She managed a genuine smile. “What a wondrous thing, child.” She tilted her head in a way that Lotor did so often, her white hair coming to hang along her temple. “Tell me, has my husband been a good teacher?”

The younger woman nodded vigorously, and in doing so, her eyes brightened with tears. “Yes,” she said, voice tightening. And then she quickly set down the knitting needles, looking embarrassed. “Forgive me. Emotions are so vivid to me now. But, um—” she sniffled, wiping her eyes, her elfin ears flicking back—“yes, he is a most patient teacher with me.”

And it was around then that one Lotor Dalir arrived, sleepily scratching at his side as he shuffled through. His hair was in a wild tangle from a restless sleep, bags under his eyes. “…A knitting lesson?” he asked, his velvet voice cracked with sleep. His gaze fell to the knotted blanket in the princess’s hand. “Father, are you tormenting the princess with your strange pastimes?”

“Oh, yes.” Zarkon’s voice was dry. But Honerva saw his reddish eyes sweep over their son in his usual worry. “Perhaps you would enjoy to be tormented as well.”

At that, the princess giggled, “I can confirm, Lotor, that it is a painless torment, and rather fun besides.”

“My god,” Lotor said mildly, looking between them. “Father, have you bewitched her? Princess, how on earth do you find such to be fun?”

She gently pulled up the gnarled edge of her blanket, which held many loose ends. “I am making a blanket for the baby,” she murmured. “With my own two hands, I am _creating_ something.”

Lotor paused. His expression broke slightly, and then he said, voice halting, “Well, then. It is a lovely blanket, princess.”

* * *

Allura Singh wandered in the quantum realm, looking for the alien Lotor who had been her guide. She still wore a content, bright smile from meeting the King Alfor, who encouraged her to explore the realm but reiterated several times that she was always more than welcome in his house and to please not forget a poor king.

In her wanderings, she happened across a youthful boy with reddish hair and elfin ears, with markings similar to King Alfor. Her eyes lit in recognition. “Excuse me, sir? Sir, can you help me?”

The boy looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged in the grass. His purple markings on his cheeks stretched as he smiled. “Of course.” His voice was light and airy and accented in a way that mimicked Alfor and Lotor’s intonations. “Are you new to the realm? I do not recognize your face.”

There was something particularly disarming about him. Perhaps it was his sweet face or the great hope in his eyes. Allura found herself kneeling down in the grass. “Yes, actually. I’m Allura.”

His eyes brightened. “My people once had a princess named that. I am Bandor.” And then he looked down at his lap, where he was working on a small, little device. “How can I help you, Allura?”

“Well, I’m ah, looking for a man who was my guide but seems to have wandered off. His name is Lotor. Would you happen to know where he would go here?”

Bandor’s elfin ears drooped suddenly, and he blinked. A sadness came into his expression, pulling down his lips. “…Lotor? Of the Galra?”

Allura watched his reaction curiously. “Yes, that is the one. Do you know him?”

“Know him?” The boy’s face tightened in great pain. “He was my idol. And then I—I ruined so many things.” He looked down, suddenly appearing even younger than he was. “I can find him for you easily enough, but I will hide my face in doing so.”

She frowned, her white brows knitting together. “Why would you do that?”

His pale fingers clenched into the device on his knee. “Many people have died from universal instability—and it’s all because of me,” he whispered. “So many, even Lotor, are dead because of _me_.”

* * *

The once-emperor Lotor sat silently beside a small river. He trailed his long, clawed fingers in the cool, healing waters. It was said that the river had formed from the tears of each being who had crossed into the realm, and that the realm carried the pain away.

He dipped his hand in, brows knitted in turmoil, eyes misted. “Why am I so conflicted,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He’d thought he had achieved full peace—that the image of his mother would not disturb him so. He’d imagined he would be able to open his arms to a true Honerva, even longing for the mother that Zarkon had spoken of.

“ _Your mother_ ,” his father had murmured, face tight in longing, “ _sang songs in ancient Altean to you. She said you kicked in happiness when she did—that you would be a scholar and a warrior. A true philosopher king_.”

But instead of happiness, the sight of her had twisted something deep within his gut. It left him with a chill down his spine in a way that Zarkon did not—perhaps because he knew he’d never known his real father.

But Honerva…he had seen glimpses of her. The darker sides of her.

He swallowed hard, suddenly blinking away tears. “I desire peace,” he said to the river. He lightly splashed his fingers into the current. “Give me peace, now. Please.”

The river and the ground beneath him pulsed with an enduring heartbeat, like a lullaby for all the lost souls in the realm.

Lotor closed his eyes, inhaling a shaky breath.

Perhaps his latent pains were why he did not yet desire to leave the quantum realm. That he needed its strange and deep connections to calm him. The lullaby of the realm swept through him, easing the stress lines around his eyes. The wind picked up to caress his cheek and brush back his hair in a soothing manner, and he managed a weak twitch of his lips, feeling his pain slip away, into the earth and the river.

It was in the midst of his meditation that Allura Singh appeared from the trees, her lithe form hesitant.

Lotor’s ears flicked at the sound of her approaching. His bloodshot, alien eyes opened to focus upon her, immediately catching that something had changed.

A flicker of movement to her right.

He caught the sight of reddish hair—Bandor.

A new great turmoil overcame him, and he tensed in worry. “Allura?”

The human woman wrung her hands, tears in her eyes. She seemed to try speaking, but her lips closed, and she stared at him, greatly haunted with sorrow. Eventually, she managed to whisper, “What terrible things.” Her voice was watery. “What terrible, horrible things.”

Lotor swallowed hard. He pulled his hand from the healing waters, his claws flickering with the droplets. “Are you alright?”

Allura wiped her eyes. “I will be,” she whispered. “For I feel this realm acting on me. But…” She blinked several times, her face twisting in great pain. “ _Oh, Lotor_.”

She knew.

_She knew._

He pressed his lips together, his elfin ears flicking back in an anxiety. “Allura, whatever you have heard, pay it no mind, for the past is in the past.” He softened his voice. “It cannot be undone, as much as I wish it could be.”

Tears slipped from her cheeks freely. She shakily brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, looking frail and ill. “Trillions of lives,” she whispered. “All coming undone over Bandor and his _communicator_.”

Lotor felt his throat tighten hard. “It is all my fault. Bandor’s conscience weighs on him greatly, but it should be me who takes full responsibility. And I do.”

The anxiety in him rose. He knew this Allura could not flip him over and slam him into the ground. But he did not know what Bandor had said, or the extent to which Allura Singh would feel pity instead of ire.

The woman’s breath halted as she gingerly moved to sit in the grass before him. “You know, the—um—Lotor of my world had struggled through some difficult decisions as well.” She looked up at him, her eyes watery. “But…not like this.”

He hesitated, frozen by the look in her face. He dared to ask softly, “Do you think me a monster now?”

Her eyes widened. “No, of course not.” Her breath hitched. “Bandor—he said he knew you were trying to protect their colony from a witch named Haggar, who could sense concentrated Altean energy. And that you were…building ships that would feed off a pilot’s own energy. That you were creating an army while also disguising their energy signature, and it all went so terribly wrong.”

Lotor’s eyes began to burn. His voice raised in a plea. “So, then you know it is my fault, truly.”

Allura fell silent. And then she whispered, “You should have told the first colony the dangers they were in.” She looked down and picked a small juniberry flower growing among weeds. “But it is not your fault that this…witch could sense things or picked up on Bandor’s broadcasting signal. Nor is it Bandor’s fault for fearing for his sister.”

He blinked, still fearful that Allura would reject or hate him. But his death as a result of hiding information spurned him to speak truth, to babble about it, even. “It _is_ my fault. He awoke in the middle of my attempts to cover the disaster up while still hoping for some image as a messiah. To placate the witch with the bodies that remained, in hopes of not also revealing the first colony.”

He looked down at his lap, the winds brushing against him as his heart throbbed. He felt his face begin to crack in strange ways.

Before he knew it, Allura Singh had leaned over on her knees, wrapping her arms around him. She was soft and warm, her hair carrying the same scent as one Princess Allura. “I am sorry,” she said, voice breaking.

His long, alien arms suddenly tightened around her as he hid his face in the crook of her neck, his tears sinking against the smooth material of her leather motor jacket. She was small against him, but steady, for now. He feared telling her the full story—of how the incident had made him paranoid, desiring to end the Galra once and for all. How quintessence exposure ripped open every vulnerable, selfish fear in him, turning him temporarily into a monster, who then even slashed at his own father in madness.

But like this, wrapped in her arms, he did not feel like a monster. He did not want her to see him as a monster.

Her small, calloused hands came up to stroke his wild, white hair. “No wonder you’ve stayed here for so long,” she whispered shakily. “You have so much pain within you, like waves. I can feel it now.”

Lotor leaned against her, his eyes closed. He imagined that perhaps this was what Princess Allura would have said, if she could have known the full story. He dared to remain in a vulnerable position with her, simply listening to her heartbeat and the shaky inhale of her breath.

Her thumb stroked the back of his neck in a rhythmic pattern that mimicked the lullaby in the ground and river and trees.

He whispered shakily, his velvet voice muffled by her jacket, “There is not much to do with this sorrow, but work it out.”

Allura leaned her cheek against the top of his warm head. “Have you spoken to anyone since?” she whispered.

He swallowed back emotion. “My father. Alfor. And very briefly, Bandor, who avoids me like a plague.”

“He is scared you despise him,” she murmured softly.

Lotor exhaled. “I do not despise him." But he had vague memories of lashing out at the boy in his initial rage upon waking up. He’d been vehement with everyone, seething with tears for his fallen dreams and every frustration that his life had thrust upon him. Bandor had once attempted to speak to him, and Lotor recalled snarling in hatred, scaring him off. Every time he had since attempted to reach out to Bandor in hopes of reconciliation, he was nowhere to be found, often roaming the great expanse of the realm. The boy instead searched for other Alteans, including his own mother and father, who had lost their lives in the great mechanical explosions and subsequent power draining.

Yet another way that Lotor had proven his title as a messiah to be laughable.

Lotor’s face twisted in pain. “I do not despise Bandor,” he repeated suddenly. “I was…blind and confused by quintessence, when I arrived here.” His voice took on a glum, hopeless edge. “He will not speak to me now, for I am a fallen god to the Alteans and even worse, a fallen man. I do not expect his forgiveness, even as I long to right history for him.”

And somewhere in the midst of the forest, the young Bandor listened in, his fingers tightening on the bark of a flowering tree.

* * *

Princess Allura of Altea nervously fiddled with the loose scarf upon her head as she stared at the great, metal beast looming in the sunset. “This is how humans fly?” Her hand came down to rest upon her abdomen protectively. The wind whipped her pink sari and white curls about her.

Lotor Dalir’s gentle hand was wrapped around her arm to keep her from blowing away in the winds. “Yes,” he murmured to her softly. “I promise you, it is quite safe.”

She turned to look at him, searching his eyes. That evening, he had brushed out his hair and put on a dark button-down shirt. He looked nervous, but rightfully so.

This was it.

Their flight to India.

To Allura Singh’s grave.

“I do not worry about its safety,” she confessed. “Only that I might fall ill in your metal bird. What if I have another, ah, spell of sickness?” Her voice grew frail with concern. “Is there a bag or a receptacle?”

By that point in time, after several months in the care of the Dalir family, the princess had begun to show, nearing into her second trimester. Her baby bump was visible beneath the folds of the sari, and she often stroked it in awe when she was not nauseated with morning sickness. At her side, she carried a small purse filled with crackers, on Honerva’s demand that she eat a little at a time to maintain her strength and ward away sickness.

Lotor helped her along, protectively guiding her up onto the steps. “Do not worry about such things. There are facilities onboard, yes.”

She turned to look at him again, nervous. “I would hate to ruin anything more of yours.”

His tired lips twitched up, and the action made him appear as more of his usual, handsome self, the wind catching his white hair. “Love, you can ruin whatever of mine you want.”

The princess flushed at that, her elfin ears perking beneath the pink scarf around her head. She looked away then. “Yes, but flight is so often bumpy and uncomfortable, and even at rest I tend to be—”

Her voice trailed off.

As she entered the cabin, her eyes widened. The interior was not like the military, utilitarian metal of the Voltron lions, nor like the sleek metal of Sincline. This metal bird was furnished as if it were a home on the inside, complete with a few plush couches, a bar area, a few great windows, and even a bedroom on the far end.

“Oh,” she whispered.

The man patted her arm and guided her in. “Your chariot, madam,” he murmured. It was his closest attempt at humor yet.

She turned to him, bewildered. “This is not a chariot at all,” she breathed, “but a little, floating palace. I did not know humans had such.”

“We have many things,” he retorted lightly, indignant in an amused way. He leaned against the threshold, and then he swallowed hard, his humor faltering as he stared at her.

Allura nervously tightened her hands over her baby bump, as if to settle the baby’s nerves, even if they were her own. “You stopped smiling. Did I insult you?”

His handsome face pulled, and he managed a pained smile. “No, princess. Simply that, in the light with your ears and markings hidden, you are her image. Or she is yours. And I—” his voice caught off with great emotion. He sighed, leaning his head against the threshold, his white hair swaying in the wind. He looked vulnerable then, as if his eyes would tear up once more. “I hope this works.”

The princess lowered her gaze for a time, biting her lip. “It will,” she said softly.

As she spoke, a great shadow gently pushed Lotor out of the way from the threshold. Zarkon Dalir entered, with Honerva behind him. They were silent and apprehensive, wearing more pragmatic clothing.

Zarkon’s dark eyes met Allura’s.

She spoke with him silently in that moment, searching his gaze. He was anxious, like the rest of them.

The man looked away, scarred lips tight as he gently guided Honerva to a nearby couch. His wife had been exhausted as of late from her own illness, but she was stubborn enough to demand that she go to India with them.

Wrapped around Honerva’s forearm was a small device fitted with a touch-screen. Allura had seen it only a few times before but knew something was wrong with the mother every time she had to sit down, suddenly breathless and winded for no reason.

There was a deep somberness between all four of them as Zarkon helped tuck Honerva into one of the safety belts along the couch, carefully pulling the strap over her as she complained, “I can do this myself, you know.”

“I am aware,” came Zarkon’s soft voice. “But I would not see you in pain.” As the seatbelt clicked into place, he pressed a loving kiss to Honerva’s pale temple.

She closed her eyes in want of it.

And suddenly, the princess had to turn away, a sharp spark of emotion ripping through her. She felt tears burn her eyes for all too many reasons—that this version of Zarkon and Honerva were so kind and intimate, for all of the obstacles in their way. That this Lotor Dalir ached for his Allura Singh so loyally, across time and space. That so many people had felt true love.

Princess Allura felt her cheeks burn in heated pain as she ran a hand over her swollen belly. The word _love_ had never been used between her or Emperor Lotor. He had spoken sweet things to her, and dirty things as well in the middle of making love.

None of it had lasted.

“ _We could rule together_ ,” he’d murmured in her ear, breathless, voice husked from finding release in her arms several times. “ _You would be my empress, and I your emperor.”_

They’d lain on the floor of the Sincline ship, motes of quintessence as fireflies around them, kissing their skin. His warm, calloused fingers, still slick with love making, stroked her softly between her legs.

Allura had been in such a euphoric state that she had dragged him down for another kiss, arching into his touch, ignoring the odd twitch of his lips. She’d thought at the time that it had been a smile of delight, but now she wondered if it had been a smirk of triumph—that he had dominated the heir to the Altean throne and successor of Oriande’s secrets. That she was his pretty little chess piece in a much larger scheme for control, and that she’d stoked his power trip every time she’d moaned his name or clung to him. Even now, her very being bore signs that he had quite solidly spread her legs, as if she were nothing more than a wanton floozy.

Her diminished posture must have spoken for her. Before she knew it, Lotor Dalir was at her side, gently reaching for her hand. “Are you alright?” he asked, voice soft.

The dissonance of Lotor Dalir and Emperor Lotor made her breath hitch.

She clung to his hand “I am fine.” She tried to lighten her voice to hide her sorrows. “Just…felt a bit of a cramp, I suppose.”

His blue eyes—so familiar and sad—slid to her in anxiety. “You do not have to do this,” he murmured to her softly. The words seemed to pain him even as he spoke them, but his velvet voice was earnest. “If you are too tired or in pain, we can shut down this plane and return home.”

Allura turned to him fully. “Rest will not cure the aches I have,” she confessed. She feared even the thought of lying in bed alone, staring listlessly up at a ceiling. “And…I long to see this Allura Singh who has so enraptured you.” Her ears flicked in sadness beneath the scarf. “She seems truly delightful.”

Lotor’s fingers caressed her own. His white, elegant brows knitted together. “Are you certain I can do nothing to help you?”

The ache in his own voice—that he was somehow helpless—inspired the princess to reach up and stroke his gaunt cheek. “Help me open up those pesky cracker packets with the plastic on them,” she whispered. “And smile for me, please.”

The inanity of her request made his lips stretch in a mix of amusement and sadness. He leaned into the touch of her hand. “I will open all the cracker packets you want me to,” he declared lightly. He stepped forward, wrapped his arm around her waist. “Now, come on, love. Let us get you tucked in safely for the flight.”

It was then she realized his fingers were trembling against her.

She looked down at his hand around her waist as she guided him forward. “Are—are _you_ alright?” she whispered.

He did not answer her.

He was guiding them both to separate seats on the other side of the plane, away from Honerva and Zarkon.

Princess Allura’s expression faulted, and she tugged on his sleeve. “I mean it,” she demanded. “Are you alright, Lotor?”

His breath came as a shaky exhale. He smelled of spices, which would likely sour under the hard toil of secretly digging up one Allura Singh from six feet of dirt. “I do not know what I am,” he admitted, voice halted. “I fear to say I am happy. I fear to—” His voice tightened and cut off. He tried again. “To see her.”

She tightened her hand around his. “If those videos and images are at all true, then she will rejoice at the sight of you.”

Lotor swallowed hard. He looked increasingly anxious. “Perhaps, but I fear I am much changed.” He blinked several times. He was on the brink of tears. “And I have to dig her up first. I have to _actually_ —”

He could not even speak it.

The princess paused their walk, looking up at him. Tears misted in her eyes at the anguish in his own. “You will not see her in death,” she promised. “I will not allow it. I feel that she would not wish it either.”

He pressed his lips together. And then he leaned his forehead against her own, his breath halting. He squeezed her hand.

Then he pulled away. His sharp cheeks glistened with tears. And he managed a tight, silent nod of gratefulness. 

* * *

The flight to India was only four hours in human time, but Princess Allura grew restless quickly. The Earth’s sun had long set as she sat there in the soft lights, munching on cracker after cracker. And then she pulled a half-eaten one from her lips only to whine softly, “I cannot tell if I am eating these anymore to ward off morning sickness, or if I am in fact stress-eating.”

Lotor sat beside her, listlessly and anxiously staring out the window. He turned to her, looking her over. “Why would you stress-eat?” he murmured in worry. “Do you expect something to go wrong?”

She lowered her gaze to her lap. “No, not like that. I simply…feel such a nervous energy. It may be coming from the little one.” Her face twisted, stretching her Altean marks. “Or perhaps it is simply some form of indigestion.” Tears of frustration came to her eyes. “I cannot really tell anymore; I feel so out of sorts. And I’m running out of crackers.”

His blue eyes narrowed in concern. “Do you want more? We do have snacks in the bar.”

The princess bit her lip. “If it’s not too much trouble,” she begged. “But do you have those, um, what were they called—the green slivers in the bitter juice?”

“…Pickles?”

“Yes,” she begged, her alien eyes widening. It was as if a lightbulb went off in her mind, and a relief and deep craving overcame her face. “The little one desires them greatly, as do I. Do you have some? I believe we are nervous because we are tired of crackers and want other things.”

The human man blinked, and then he smiled, and it sweetened his bloodshot eyes. A genuine humor worked into him. “I will search for you. Given that Zethrid often flies with me, I imagine we do have…an assortment of things.”

He patted her hand, and then he stood up from his chair.

The princess wiggled her toes in her sandals. “Thank you,” she called to him, her heart squeezing that Lotor Dalir had never once denied her nor huffed about her many pregnancy problems. He instead so willingly took on her requests, which left her feeling both deeply grateful and somewhat of a burden, no matter how often he assured her she wasn’t. She looked down at her swollen belly in a hint of betrayal. “Stop making me eat everything, please,” she complained softly to her child, patting her belly.

But the child did not respond, and it was probably just as well, because between Lotor’s sass and her own stubbornness, Allura feared what kind of temperament the baby would have.

She rubbed her abdomen in a mindless gesture of motherly affection, but her face faulted in a sudden longing for a purple, male hand to intertwine with hers. Her voice trailed off. “You’re a trouble-maker, you are.”

A cold feeling swelled within her, the more she thought about it. The princess bit her lip as she sat there in the silence, feeling the glowing light of her child sewing itself together within her. Her hand stilled over the baby. Allura’s face began to crack with a sorrow and fear. “Hopefully not as much as your father,” she whispered.

She swallowed hard, the light material of the sari twisting between her scarred fingers. She looked down at her hands, seeing the reddened lines that remained of her initial injuries from the residual blast of resurrecting entire universes. The stitch marks made her feel terribly ugly in that moment, and she felt cold and distant with her own body, remembering days when she had stared in a mirror in delight of her own image and her smooth skin and the hourglass of her hips, knowing that she had been quite beautiful.

Her full lips pulled downward, her white brows furrowing hard as she suddenly fought down several emotions about her various ruinations that now marred her life.

Ugly.

If the once-emperor Lotor could see her now, perhaps he would sniff and turn away, too proud to claim her as the mother of his child.

At that time, Lotor Dalir returned, carrying a paper plate of thin-sliced pickles, all aligned with an attention to detail that belied his own borderline-OCD tendencies. “I have found a treasure trove of sandwich pickles,” he declared. He lowered the plate to her gently. “I hope this helps.”

The princess tentatively grabbed for the plate. She felt the ache of starvation within her, despite the sour taste of sadness in her mouth. “Thank you,” she said, voice wavering.

She desperately crunched down on a pickle, hoping to quiet the anxiety within her.

The moment the taste hit her mouth, her eyes watered.

Lotor moved to sit back down beside her, sighing as he set the chair back, his white hair straggling down his cheeks. His face still carried an anxious tenseness to it, and he did not seem to catch her own emotional distress as he hide his face in hands. “Do not mind me,” he said, voice muffled and exhausted, as if he were fighting himself. “I may try to sleep until we are ready to land, as my thoughts are running a thousand kilometers a second.” His velvet voice turned with a petulant pout to hide his genuine anxiety. “I will be exhausted before I even start actual work.”

Princess Allura lowered the plate to her lap, discretely wiping her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Allow me to help you.”

He pulled his hands from his haggard face. His blue eyes were soft and vulnerable. “You already have.”

She dared to reach out to him. “I can help you get to sleep,” she offered. “I have…had to do this trick to myself lately for some shut-eye.” Her fingertips glowed. “Would you like my assistance?”

Lotor searched her, his face pulling in pain. “If you do not mind.”

The princess gently pressed her fingertips to his temple, caressing the white strands of his hair. “Please close your eyes,” she commanded.

He did so. And then she gently flowed energy into him, mimicking the relaxation hormones of his body and flooding his blood with it. The man’s handsome face quickly relaxed into total, peaceful sleep, a sigh of relief escaping his lips as he chased meaningless dreams. His long limbs relaxed against the chair.

And then Princess Allura shakily pulled her fingers away from him.

When he slept, Lotor Dalir seemed terribly innocent, his white curling about him in a halo, the fine stress lines in his face easing away.

The sight raked emotion through her, and a wave of protectiveness tightened her throat. She looked away from him, biting her lip hard as her eyes watered. She knew his misery stemmed entirely from his connections with Allura—both herself and the mysteriously happy Allura Singh of the past. He seemed so aged and worn. Simply being with Allura Singh had cost him everything, just as it had cost Emperor Lotor everything as well.

Perhaps, things were not always so different across multiverses.

But perhaps they did not have to stay that way.

She shakily rubbed her stomach as her eyes watered once more. And then she forced herself up from her seat, her curls slipping down her shoulders, her pink sari fluttering with her actions. A small cramp tore through her, and she gasped, stumbling forward a bit to reach for a counter. Her dark fingers bled white as she gripped for stability, holding herself as she fought to breathe in and out. In and out—

And then it passed. She stood there shakily, looking up to see Honerva watching her from the far side of the plane, her gold eyes narrow and sharp. She raised her hand and waved at Allura to come to her. The woman had such an aura about her—so commanding like Honerva of Daibazaal, and yet so utterly motherly as well. 

“Come here, child,” Honerva called to her. Her voice was weak from her illness.

The sound of it spurned the princess forward more. “Is something the matter?” she asked quietly.

Off to the side, Zarkon Dalir looked up from his book, his dark eyes watching them both.

Honerva paid no mind to it, and instead murmured, “I was about to ask you the same question. Are you certain you can handle the task before us?”

The princess stood there in the midst of great luxury. “No one has ever asked after my care the way you all do,” she said softly, her voice tightening. “But I promise you, I have resurrected worlds. I can most certainly bring to life the one you have lost.”

Gold eyes slid down to the princess’s pregnant belly, then looked back up with a question.

Princess Allura’s face twitched in nervousness. “I believe the child is just unsettled from the experience of flight. Or else that I ate pickles earlier, and now I think I rather ate too many.” She clasped her hands behind her back awkwardly. “I fear I’m terrible at reading this child’s mind.” There was an anxiety within her—a fear as to the responsibility of motherhood. “I don’t…seem to know what is the matter.” Her breath hitched. “Maybe it is unhappy with me, and I can only imagine the many reasons for such.”

Honerva’s aged face softened. She raised up her thin hands. “Sit down by me.”

The princess willingly clasped onto her hand and slowly lowered onto the plush couch, her pink sari mixing with the dark cloth of Honerva’s.

The mother searched her eyes. “I can feel your anxiety from across this plane,” she confessed lightly. “No doubt, the child within you feels it as well. If you are not worried as to the work before us, what is it then that so frightens you?”

Princess Allura swallowed hard. Her dark fingers ticked nervously across her stomach. “Are you certain you are not a witch, if you can feel such?”

To the side, Zarkon’s scarred lip stretched, but he continued to look down at his book, reading.

Honerva’s face split with a smile. “I am a woman of many talents,” she boasted. “Now tell me, dear.”

The princess looked down. She swallowed hard, then hesitated to speak, “After—after I bring back this Allura Singh, I imagine she and all of you will be quite happy.” Her voice wavered. “I fear I am not so pure of a soul as she is, for I have done many terrible things. I believe this child might…” She trailed off, flushing in shame. “It is a silly thing.”

“Nothing is silly,” Honerva deadpanned.

Princess Allura’s breath hitched. “I believe this child will not love me, once it knows me,” she whispered. “I fear it will cling to the other Allura—the one who smiles so brightly in pictures and coos over the babies of her supporters and didn’t kill the child’s father.” Her eyes watered. “And I am not so fit for motherhood. I’ve never—I’ve never even held a baby before or found them particularly of interest.” She looked away, wiping her eyes silently.

Honerva pressed her thin lips together, her white brows knitting together. She remained quiet for a time before she asked quietly, “Do you regret this pregnancy?”

Her watery eyes blinked owlishly. Her hand slipped away from her baby bump, the material of her pink sari catching against her callouses. “In ways,” she whispered. “In Altean culture, this child would be a grave offense, for I have lain with a man who slaughtered my people and deceived me.” She looked down, her elfin ears drooping. “Although I…didn’t know it at the time. I suppose it is of great luck to me that I landed here, where I am protected and hidden away from all.”

“How could your people hold love against you?”

Princess Allura blinked again, and tears slid down her face. “Because I am the federal head of my people, and I subordinated myself to a…” she could not even speak the words. Instead, she tightly added, “The Voltron Coalition, as well as my own people, would have imprisoned me. I know not what life this child would have, except that it would likely face extreme prejudice, or else be imprisoned alongside me. I would have not…kept it, I think, if I had woken up in my own universe.” The princess’s face then twisted hard in utter pain. “Is that cruel of me? I do not wish to be cruel.”

Honerva reached out and gently brushed away the younger woman’s tears, even as her own eyes watered. “The _universe_ is cruel,” she corrected softly.

Princess Allura leaned into the mother’s hand in desperation for motherly affection, feeling as if she were a child herself. Her lips quivered. “But—but here, I could perhaps disguise us and walk among you as humans. It would not be an honest life, but I do believe this child could be happy among you all. I want to see some part of Lotor happy.”

The mother was quiet, searching her eyes as she stroked the princess’s sorrow-reddened cheek. “A disguise?”

The princess looked away in hesitance. “I can…blend into the human race if I desire it. And I believe I should be able to influence the appearance of my child, so that all Altean and Galran characteristics are hidden away. I know you’ve said that this world is not ready to hear about aliens, and I do not wish to be so permanently relegated to seclusion.”

Honerva’s white brows knitted together in increasing scientific curiosity. “Why have you not already…changed yourself, then?”

“I fear the transformation would disturb you,” the princess whispered. “I resemble the human Allura of this world. I would need to practice and test ways to differentiate myself.”

“May I…see this transformation?” Honerva whispered, voice straining. “I’ve heard of such power only in fairy tales. I struggle to believe it even possible, for all that I know you can do.”

The princess sniffled, and then she somewhat sheepishly began to glow, her dark skin shining with a tinge of purple as her quintessence realigned. Slowly, her marks faded from her skin, and her elfin ears shrunk into the rounded shell of a human’s. The brilliance of her eye color faded into a more mundane blue-ish purple.

Soon enough, Honerva was staring into the living image of Allura Singh herself. She recoiled her hand from the princess’s chin, her eyes wide in a mix of fright and awe.

Princess Allura quickly reverted back, biting her lip in hesitance. She looked back at the sleeping Lotor, and then her breath hitched. “Your son has nearly broken down at the sight of me several times. If he were to see me like that, I fear he would break entirely. So, I will be true to my form until his Allura is returned to him, and until I have a better disguise, for I do not wish to usurp her life.”

Honerva pressed her lips together. She reached back out again, her fingers trembling as she gently fluffed the princess’s curls. She was unsettled, attempting to recalibrate. Her voice caught in a slight hilarity. “You could certainly pass as her twin, but even I see the differences in the soul of your eyes. No one could mistake you as exactly the same person.”

To the side, one Zarkon Dalir huffed and turned the page of his book. “Let us test this theory at a later time,” he murmured in a deadpan. And then he slid his eyes to the princess, and within his usually disgruntled gaze was a soft glimmer of hope.

The princess looked up at him with the smallest bit of hope that perhaps this universe had room for two Alluras. Her elfin ears flicked. “You speak of games,” she whispered. Her full lips dared to stretch. Her hands moved to her pregnant belly. “But I think you would tell a difference by virtue of the little one within me.”

And then her hand paused. “Unless…your Allura was pregnant as well?” she asked softly, her voice dropping to a whisper in pain at even the thought.

Honerva looked down. “No, she could not race and bear children at the same time.” Her thin fingers suddenly wove together, as if in want for a hand to hold. “Lotor hadn’t even proposed marriage to her yet, but he’d been planning on it.”

The princess fell silent. With the storm of hormones in her, she was unable to fight down the sudden burn of tears. “Oh,” she whispered. “That is still very sad.” And she rubbed her baby bump absentmindedly, trying to blink away the tears watering her eyes. Perhaps it was just as well that there had been no love child between Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh. Surely, this universe’s Lotor could not have handled such sorrows. He was soft in ways that Emperor Lotor was not.

Her pretty face pulled hard. She splayed her hands over her belly, suddenly breathing unsteadily as tears wracked through her.

Emperor Lotor had tried to kill her—just as she had tried to kill him.

“Your Allura,” she whispered, “should have had my luck for surviving, and this child should be theirs.”

Honerva looked up, searching her eyes.

There was something sad in Honerva’s gaze. “But perhaps we might never have met you.”

The princess’s expression broke. She tried to swallow back waves of emotion, her fingers tightening into the threads of her pink sari. “I’m very happy to have met you,” she whispered. “For you are so kind, and you make me feel so wanted, even though I have been little more than a burden.” Her voice caught in a pained way. “Truly, I don’t want to go back to my own world. I’d do anything to stay here, with you all.”

And then, suddenly, she felt it—a presence within her, surging playfully against her hand.

Princess Allura gasped, holding her hand to her belly, freezing in place. Her elfin ears pulled back in surprise. And she stayed that way for some time, simply feeling for another little movement. Her hand began to shake in anticipation.

Honerva leaned forward. “Child, what is wrong?”

Tears bubbled to her eyes once more. “I—I felt a kick.” Her Altean markings began to glow in awe, her face flushing. “It was, ah, just a little movement.” She tried to inhale, only for it to catch on a mix of a sob and a noise of delight. “My baby moves.”

The older mother’s face split wide in a watery smile. “Do you not feel that you hold the universe in your hands, in such a moment?”

The princess sat there in quiet awe, feeling the small baby within her try to stretch out. She imagined it was yawning, preparing for sleep, its little hands and toes wiggling to get comfortable. She swallowed hard, and tears slid down her worn cheeks. “Yes,” she whispered. “Though the multiverse is very cold, and this child radiates a heat not unlike its father.” She sniffled, stroking her baby bump with her scarred fingers, wondering if perhaps the baby could feel her touch.

Another little kick.

She shakily inhaled, trying to imagine the baby’s face.

And then in the back of her mind, she felt its quintessence—a raw, thriving energy that pulsed around her own. She closed her worn eyes, attempting to focus purely on the strong, rapid heartbeat.

For one wild tick, she felt the child’s energy curiously turn to face her own field and bump her right back, mimicking her actions.

Princess Allura’s eyes opened, and her hands fell away from her body. A strange haunting overcame her.

The child, not even born yet, was _learning_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is doing well in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. I really feel like I’m in some strange alternate universe myself and so perhaps identify a little more with this story’s Princess Allura than ever before. A month ago, I couldn’t have imagined that this is what my life would be like, haha. A month ago, my biggest life concern was planning for a birthday that I have now spent in quarantine instead with questionable ongoing food/health/financial security. The total loss of control in every area of life is both making it difficult to write/update things—and yet also driving me to at least try. Writing has been a constant in my life for over a decade now, so I’m trying to use that to still experience stability, haha. 
> 
> In the meantime, I am absolutely humbled and privileged to announce that Quantum Entanglement has received some fanart! Many thanks to LunarMagnolia for the lovely [TSL and QE drawings](https://the-lightning-strikes-again.tumblr.com/post/613572630994452480/lunar-magnolia-happy-birthday-to) that you can view on tumblr. If you can, please do support LunarMagnolia's awesome work! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please let me know if you’d like to see more!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing: LunarMagnolia, Espanholina, asennnaa, and mutedtempest! 
> 
> LunarMagnolia: Thank you so much, dear! I’m so happy you like the Zarkon and Princess Allura interactions. I’d like to think that in another universe like this, he could have been the second father to her that he was meant to be ;asjflsdf. Thank you as always for your ongoing support with this story and with all the others. It really means a lot! 
> 
> Espanholina: Oh wow, thank you for your in-depth review of the last chapter! I’m looking forward to seeing what this Lotura child can do too, haha. And oof, you might be onto something with your projections for the future, muahaha. I so want Princess Allura to stop suffering too, although I think she might have a few trials yet before she can find total happiness. At least she’s slowly on her way to obtaining it! Thank you again for all of your support and for your kind birthday wishes! <3 
> 
> Asennnaa: Oof, Zarkon and Allura bonding makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside too! I love to explore it. And yaaas, I entertain myself so much just with the image of Zarkon knitting happily beside a fireplace, haha. Thank you so much for the kind words on addressing the colony issue. I’m trying to grapple with it as best as I can, haha. I appreciate your reviews! 
> 
> Mutedtempest: Ahh, thank you for taking a chance on this story! I know main AR isn’t your thing, so it means a lot that you’re reading this one and enjoying it. And loll your reviews are very coherent for 3 in the morning, don’t worry! Thank you again!

The gravesite of the beloved Allura Singh was a garden of life, true to Lotor Dalir’s testimony. Princess Allura pulled her scarf around her elfin ears down, and they flicked in awe of the sounds of rushing water. Her eyes widened in awe. “Oh,” she whispered. “How beautiful.” The warm Indian wind picked up, ruffling her white curls and the pink cloth of her sari.

Tears rose to her eyes.

The gravesite contained a stone path to the gravestone, with trees and bushes spinning in each direction. Pink wild flowers trailed along the tree trunks and the stone path in vines. Small fountains trailed from the edge of a nearby stream. Though the site was unkempt, with the bushes having grown beyond their original shape, the wildness of it seemed to fit the little secluded area.

The princess stilled in awe, falling silent at the sight of the statue that jutted from the vaulted grave stone. She was staring at her own self carved immortally in stone. The statue of Allura Singh boasted the modern clothes of the Earth people, bearing the Voltron symbol upon her jacket. Her thick curls permanently billowed about her, her lips tilted up in a little, secretive smile—as if she knew all the mysteries of the universe.

Princess Allura turned to Lotor, who stood beside her. “I can feel your love for her,” she whispered softly, “through every leaf and flower here. What a marvel this is. And the statue—it is lovely.”

The man had grown exceptionally quiet, his handsome face pulling hard. “Thank you, princess,” he said, voice halted. “I spent many days and nights on it.”

Her eyes widened. “You—you mean that you made her?”

“Yes.” There was such a strain of pain in him that he could not stare at the statue for long. He wiped his eyes, then ran his hand through his white hair. “I am sorry.” His accent thickened. “This is a difficult place for me.”

Princess Allura reached out to him, her face breaking.

He inhaled sharply as she grabbed onto his hand. He held on tight, saying nothing for a time, simply in need of the comfort she offered. And then he squeezed her hand and released it.

Lotor’s voice was quiet and wavering. Even in the moonlight, he appeared pale, as if simply being at the gravesite had inspired some level of instability in him. “I must help my father unload our supplies.” He looked to be all of two ticks away from a major breakdown, and yet somehow he trudged along, pulling away from her and turning back to the car.

Princess Allura turned with him. “Allow me to help,” she pleaded. “As you know, I am quite strong. I can carry many things.”

He slid watery eyes to her, and his lips twitched. “I’ve no doubt, love, but you also carry a child. And even if you say this is all a simple process for you, I’d rather you go into it rested.”

She pouted. “I may be pregnant, but I do believe I could displace the dirt more quickly than you or your father. Are you not anxious to see your Allura returned to life?”

Lotor paused in his walk. The wind ruffled his hair and simple clothes, and in that moment, he did not appear to be the grand playboy discussed in human magazines, but simply a man. He looked aged. “You know I am anxious. But I would not have you dig up your own counterpart. I—I want to do this, and I would not burden you further.”

In months passed, Lotor Dalir had hinted that the death of Allura Singh had been a drawn-out affair. That they had rushed her to the hospital, performed surgeries, and then discovered that in the midst of it all, her mind had already slipped from her body. Lotor, she knew, had been the last at Allura’s side, fighting to keep her on what the humans called “life support,” only to realize his hopes were meaningless in the face of evidence that she was already gone. He had haltingly admitted once that he had held Allura Singh as they took her off of life support, and that she had breathed her last in his arms as he cradled her into the afterlife. Honerva had at another time suggested that Lotor’s inability to save Allura Singh was what spurned his desperate need to compensate through works in her name. That his hands were too empty without her, and that he longed to not be helpless.

Princess Allura quieted and searched his eyes. “How then can I help you?”

He reached up and gently stroked her cheek once in a mild token of affection. “You have already done much, for you have given me hope.” His throat visibly tightened. “And even if this does not work, I will be forever grateful for the attempt.” And then he pulled away, his eyes watering all over again. “I want to do this for her. Because…sometimes, she teased that I would grow tired of her. I want her to know that I never did.”

Her ears flicked back in pain. “It is a romantic thing,” she whispered, “to be so devoted. But you will let me know if you need help, yes?”

She knew so far that Zarkon had agreed to help Lotor desecrate the grave site and pull Allura Singh’s coffin from the ground, but that it would be back-breaking work.

Lotor huffed. “I have enough anxiety in me that I believe I could move mountains with it.” And then he managed a weak smile and pulled away, working to grab shovels and work glasses. “I need to get it out somehow, or else my Allura may not even recognize me. I used to be dashing and a flirt, you know.”

The princess’s lips twitched sadly. “It seems we ruin you, no matter the universe.”

Lotor grabbed onto a shovel, his long fingers tightening against its handle. “Believe me, love. Allura Singh did not ruin me. It was the loss of her that did.”

And the words settled strangely into the princess’s mind as she thought of her own Lotor. She felt a deep pang of sorrow that left her speechless.

* * *

The exhuming of Allura Singh’s coffin was a long and dirty process. Lotor slammed the shovel into the dirty, unsettling the flowers that had grown over her grave, and then he shoved them away entirely, dumping them into a side pile of dirt. His designer jeans soon bore the dirt of her grave, as did the sharp of his cheek from wiping his face. Under the warm Indian weather, both Lotor and Zarkon were soon soaked in sweat as they dug.

Zarkon eyed his silent son, watching the jerky way that Lotor moved, as if in a pure daze. Lotor had wasted away over the past year, but there was still a well of strength in him. That was good, for during Allura Singh’s funeral, she’d been carried by six pallbearers—but now it was only himself and Lotor to lift that heavy coffin.

“You should pace yourself more, my son,” he said, voice soft even despite the rough of manual labor within it.

Lotor’s shovel hit the dirt only that much faster and harder. His white brows were knitted together tightly, his handsome face pulled in great agony. “I want this to be over with. If I stop, I’ll come to know what I’m doing, and I will break.”

“You will be forced to stop if you do not pace yourself now,” Zarkon warned.

The younger man’s breath hitched. He leaned against the shovel and eyed his father, his eyes burning with tears. And then he looked down and nodded, simply accepting the advice and moving slower. The action was so terribly against his usual, rebellious character that Zarkon watched him in worry.

Then the father retuned to his work, digging his shovel into the dirt beside him. “No smart quips for me?”

Lotor’s face pulled hard. His dark skin glistened with sweat that mixed with the tears at the corners of his eyes. “I have none. For what other father would do any of this for an ungrateful son.”

Zarkon’s hands tightened on his shovel. He swallowed hard as he dropped more dirt to the side. They’d begun to put a small dent into the earth, but they had a long way to go. “You have not been an ungrateful son for a long time.” He grunted as he dug his shovel back in. “You—changed when you met Allura, for all of my grumbling against her.”

Lotor’s lips twitched. “Ah, so you think she made me a better man, after all.”

“No.” Zarkon’s voice softened. “You made yourself a better man, to court her properly.”

For the first time all night, Lotor managed a watery huff of a laugh. “No one says ‘court’ anymore, father. And they haven’t for the last half-century.”

The sound of his amusement relaxed a tension in Zarkon’s aged face. “Then what do young ones call it?”

“Dating, father. It’s called dating.”

His face twisted. “That sounds as if you are time-stamping a woman.”

Lotor looked up. A small glint in his eye appeared. “And does courting not sound as if you are taking them on in a lawsuit?”

The father huffed. “You simply lack culture.”

“Perhaps culture lacks an appropriate word for it.”

Zarkon paused. “No, I do believe it is ‘madness,’ my son. It is absolute madness. But a madness I longed you might fall into happily.”

The younger man swallowed hard. “I _was_ happy, with Allura.” He wiped his forehead, his fingers shaking. “I do not understand the universe, but I remember Princess Allura bringing to life that plant in our house—so easily, as if she were merely breathing. Had I not seen that, I would think myself otherwise insane on this night.” He inhaled shakily to hide a hitched breath. “I hope this works.”

Zarkon eyed his son. “Did you ever learn the story of your counterpart’s life? Who the Lotor was in her world?”

His white brows knitted together. “No. The princess has been quite vague with me.” His face flushed in the night. “I simply know he was not a good man. I desire to protect her from whatever she faced with such a man, whom she calls a liar and a murderer.” A haunt was in him—the fear of what he could become when all things fell apart. “I feel the shame she has in carrying the child of this Emperor Lotor. I am ashamed that she feels such, for I always wondered…” His voice caught. “What, ah, my Allura would have felt, about children.”

“Did you not speak of that with her?”

Lotor’s voice raised helplessly. “She was at the height of her career—as was I. We were not reckless. I didn’t know if she would even tolerate traditional marriage, much less children. I thought myself lucky that she spent time with me at all.” He quieted. “She deserved better than me.”

Zarkon pressed his lips together as he worked diligently, his salt and pepper hair falling in a sweaty mat against his temples. “You must have done something right, my son. I recall her happiness with you. Perhaps your mother knocked some sense into you after all.”

The younger man smiled, but it was watery. “Or perhaps Allura simply wanted the Wife from me, and that is why she stuck around.”

The boy’s voice carried a tease, but Zarkon retorted, voice strong, “There is much to be said for loyalty. All saw hers to you, and they continue to see yours to Allura Singh. Even the Princess Allura speaks of it in awe.”

Lotor’s shovel hit the dirt again. “I would prove to the princess that I am worthy of Allura Singh. And that I will not take advantage of the miracle she has offered me so freely.” His fingers shook. “For if she can offer such so easily, surely she can recall it as well.”

It fell silent between them for a time.

Then Zarkon said slowly, “The princess is not cruel. She would not threaten that.”

His breath caught strangely, his face twitching in pain as he dug out another chunk of earth. “I don’t know, father. I’ve a big mouth sometimes. I’m bound to do something that reminds her of her this Lotor she is ashamed of. And she is not so terribly different from our Allura. So surely, I am not so different from my own counterpart.” His voice broke. “Or—or perhaps our Allura will see such a change in me that she will not love what I have become, and thereby our fates are still aligned with the princess’s universe.” Lotor was beginning to work himself into a great anxiety, to a point where he stopped shoveling dirt, his eyes watering as his limbs weakened. The straggling locks of his dirtied hair matted to his cheek. “So, I—I need to—to remember to stand straight. I must smile. Perhaps I can think of a flirt or two.” His eyes watered hard. “But she will see right through me, regardless.”

Zarkon fell silent in the midst of Lotor’s emotional turmoil.

“Yes,” he whispered. “She will see through you.”

The younger man wiped his face, streaking more dirt over his brow. He looked down at his hands, which had begun to blister. The salt of his tears stung his reddened skin, and it was then that he began to cry, his lips quivering hard.

They were still four feet away from her. The dirt was cold with death and worms.

The Allura Singh within the coffin was not like the one he’d known in life. Decaying—silent—

Zarkon said tightly, “I forbid you to lay eyes on her, until she is fully returned to life and can see you with her own eyes. You will not gaze upon her in death, my son.”

Lotor weakened enough that he had to sit down in the dirt, not even paying attention to the squish of mud around him, or the way his long hair fell against the dirt, collecting the earth of Allura’s burial. “The Princess said the same,” he whispered shakily. He sniffled, breathing out unsteadily. He wiped his nose, looking almost like a child in doing so.

He sat there in a loss, knowing that he should be elated. The sorrows would end. Every dig of the dirt was one step closer to holding Allura Singh in his arms again. But it felt so far. So impossible.

A dream.

The man hid his sweat and tear-streaked face in his blistered hands. And then an unsteady laugh escaped him in the midst of a sob. “Perhaps _she_ should not gaze at _me_ until I’ve bathed or something.” His arms were beginning to lock up in exhaustion and pain.

He wondered if he’d even be able to hold her, with how stiff his elbows and wrists had become. No doubt, Allura Singh would wrinkle her nose at him and laugh at how pathetic he looked.

The winds about the gravesite picked up, the flowers rustling in the dirt pile. The wind cooled the tears and sweat upon him, threading through his matted hair.

And in that moment, he swore he felt the wind stroke his cheek as if it were Allura Singh’s fingers, encouraging him on.

* * *

While the men worked, one Princess Allura of Altea sat on the back of a truck, her slippered feet swinging in the air as she worriedly rubbed her belly. “I cannot see him,” she complained. Her elfin ears twitched. “I barely hear them as well, but I know Lotor is crying. His voice is unsteady.”

Honerva sat beside her, the purple of her skirts flowing against the princess’s pink. She gently offered up a box of crackers. “You will dry his tears soon, or if not, he will cry of happiness.”

Her alien eyes slid to the crackers, and she hesitantly grabbed onto a saltine, munching on it as her ears drooped. “I’d rather hear him laugh,” she confessed softly in pain. “I’d never heard Lotor laugh before, prior to meeting your son.” Then her face twitched, and she made a small noise of discomfort, one of her hands pausing over her swollen belly.

The mother’s face tightened. “Are you alright?”

Princess Allura swallowed down her cracker, then whined, “I’m fine, but I think the little one is throwing a tantrum inside me. Or else is just very, very awake.” There was a stress in her eyes. “And I get the feeling that it tires of crackers and pickles and candies, but if I try to eat anything else, I grow nauseated, and I promised myself I would not vomit all over your nice things. Or ruin this very beautiful dress.”

Honerva reached up and stroked the long curls of the princess’s hair, her eyes calculating. “Pregnancy is hard,” she murmured. “But rewarding.”

The younger woman swallowed hard. “I feel ugly,” she cried suddenly, voice soft. “And here I am, eating crackers like a bump on a log, while your son and husband break themselves.” She looked utterly miserable in that moment. “Does being pregnant make me truly so powerless even in this realm?”

There was a pause, and then Honerva said slowly, voice straining, “We all feel you should not exert yourself at this time, for you will expend great power soon enough.”

The princess’s slippered feet curled inward. “It’s really not that difficult,” she admitted. “I’ve brought many back to life. Whole planets—the entire multiverse.” Her pretty face flushed, and she looked down. “A single human should not tax me so.” Her scarred fingers tightened around her belly. “Not even with this little one riding along. I just feel so useless compared to my previous life.”

Honerva’s eyes softened. “I understand that sentiment, more than you know.” She pulled her hand away, her wrist flashing with the band of technology that maintained her blood levels of a certain nerve-blocking medication.

Princess Allura watched her, her full lips pulling in a frown. “And you still do not want me to try healing you?”

The mother looked down, readjusting her band. “I would see you resurrect Allura Singh without consequence to yourself or your child. If what you say is true, and you suffer no ill effects from it, then I would be glad to let you try your magic on me later.”

Another pause. The princess huffed in a whine. “Truly, simply being pregnant should not relegate me to only rest and eating. Are you certain I cannot go and help them dig?”

“I’m absolutely certain. The least of which being, that sari you wear is very expensive.” Honerva’s voice raised airily. “And it is Allura’s as well, with the seams out. What an impression you would make, ruining her clothes with grave dirt.”

The princess’s white brows knitted together, and she squeaked. “I do want her to like me.”

Honerva gently tapped her nose, and the princess’s nose wrinkled in surprise. “Then take care of her things.”

Princess Allura whined. “I’m trying to, by resurrecting her.” And then she bit her lip and added, “Did we remember to bring additional clothing for her? If her clothes have rotted, then I fear I will be not be able to bring that back.”

The mother froze then. Her gold eyes slid to the truck bed, her aged face tightening. “I thought you could bring back anything.”

“Only living things,” she admitted. “Or images frozen in time, like when the multiverse—” she suddenly cut herself off in a wave, looking vulnerable and nervous. “—Ah, the answer is no, I cannot restore nonliving materials that have decayed.” And then her eyes began to water, and she worriedly wrung her hands. “Oh, I did not think of this. How cruel I am. I shall have to offer this dress, and perhaps I can…string some blankets together for myself.”

Honerva bit her lip, her white brows furrowing. “I recall she was buried in simple clothing—her motor suit, her favorite t-shirt. Surely, those things would not decay so quickly.”

But the princess still looked worried. Her ears drooped, and her eyes watered. “I just want everything to be perfect, for her and him.” The emotion in her heightened until she could not hold Honerva’s gaze. “It’s all I want.” And then she began to wring her hands into the material of her dress, only to make a noise of sorrow. “I want one of us to be happy.”

* * *

The night crawled by, with clouds drifting over the moon, casting dark shadows across the graveyard. By the time one exhausted, dirtied Lotor Dalir reappeared, it was nearly three in the morning.

Witching hour.

His hands trembled, his fine clothes soaked by mud. He walked with the broken steps of a desperate man, his velvet voice halted. “We’ve—she—”

Princess Allura slid down from the back of the truck. The pink cloth of her sari fluttered along with the puff of her curls, her eyes widening. “You’ve finishing digging?”

The man swallowed, then nodded. He was still breathless. His eyes were watery. He was utterly distraught. “There is some kind of—water damage on one end,” he said shakily. “And—and there are roots from a tree that have punctured the sides.” His voice broke. “We cannot lift her out.”

The princess reached out to him, her Altean markings glowing in the night, her eyes watering hard once more at even the sight of the distressed Lotor. “Do not fear,” she called gently to him. She dared to touch his face, her lithe, scarred fingers brushing at the dirt streaked down his sharp cheek. “It can still be opened, yes? These coffins you lay people to rest in?”

Lotor leaned his cheek against her, his eyes miserable. “Yes,” he whispered. “But I fear what remains of her.”

Allura stroked his face, unsettling dirt and tears. “It matters not how she looks now,” she whispered. “For the body within the coffin is not her. But I will use it as a tie, to bring her back to you, and I will restore all that she is. I promise you this.”

The man’s hands were red and raw from digging, bleeding from scratches and where he’d tried to pull the roots that locked the coffin with the earth.

She looked down, her face tightening as she reached out to his trembling fingers. “This will not do either. How are you to hold her in this state?” And before he could respond, she closed her eyes, drawing in quintessence from the air. Her fingertips began to glow, and she slowly healed him of his injuries, her white brows knitting together in concentration as she worked. “If this—Allura Singh is truly me, and if I am truly her in some way—then she will be tired and grumpy when first awoken. And she will want you to hold her but will be unhappy if you get blood and dirt all over her.”

The little baby inside her womb lightly twitched, as if in silent agreement.

Lotor watched as she healed his hands, and he broke further. “You are wasting energy upon me. Please, do not if it means that—”

“—Oh, hush,” she retorted softly. “You’ve all made me sit for hours. I’m itching to be of use around here.” She released his hands, which no longer trembled in pain, the bloodied scratches healed over into smooth, dark skin. “Is that not better?”

His eyes slid to her, then down to his hands, then to his mother, who watched curiously from the truck bed, her gold eyes catching the dim light of the night like a cat’s—curious, calculating. He swallowed hard. “Yes, princess.” For a brief time, his form glowed a light purple along with her own. He looked haunted from it—that in his human life, he was far beneath this strange, alien configuration of Allura.

She reached up and patted his dirty cheek.

Then she pulled away, catching sight of one worn and weary Zarkon sitting at the base of the dirt pile, staring down into the hole of the earth. He was breathless as well, the hard lines of his body tight in a way that suggested he’d pulled his shoulder and neck muscles. He was as dirty as Lotor, his face tight in disappointment.

Princess Allura moved to him, stepping out of her beautiful slippers and pulling up the hem of her dress as she approached the grave.

Zarkon’s dark eyes slid to her. “Do not come closer. You might fall in and injure yourself.”

The princess paused, daring to peek over the edge to the final resting spot of her human counterpart. And it was then that her heart pulled in an unexpected wave of pain. The coffin lay as unburied as it could be, with tree limbs surging deep into its side, a little underground stream filling one corner of the dirt, creating a small well of water from the earth.

Princess Allura’s eyes misted. “Truly, this box of wood was beautiful once. I do not understand these human traditions of burying the dead so deeply, but…” She kneeled down, her white hair slipping to her knees. “For as much as you tried to keep her separate, she still desired to become one with nature. To be a part of something.” She reached out, her fingertips glowing as she read the field of energy. “Her quintessence has long departed, but the essence of her body called forth this stream. And the tree limbs have traveled far to be with her. A part of her flows through the whole of this gravesite.” Her voice caught, a whisper of awe. “That is why the flowers bloom so brilliantly and wild.”

Zarkon watched her, his eyes wet. “You suggest there is a level of awareness still within her.”

The princess’s white brows furrowed in pain. “Death does not work in that way. But bodies do...maintain the imprint of what they learned in life. I can tell by the energy array here, your Allura Singh desired connection. She did not wish to be lonely. The earth and the waters responded.”

She fell silent in a reverence before her fallen counterpart, feeling suddenly more camaraderie with her than she had ever expected.

A lonely spirit.

“Can you…” Zarkon asked quietly, “still bring her back?”

Princess Allura sniffled, then pulled herself back up. “Yes, but it may take longer. The state of this grave suggests her spirit is just as heavily integrated, wherever it is in the heavens.”

Zarkon moved to help her stand.

She grabbed onto his hand, which was large and steady, and in doing so, offered up some of her power to him, to heal the stiff aches in his body. The man inhaled sharply, his eyes widening.

She managed a weak, merry smile—with the smallest glint of mischief, to suggest she’d been waiting for him to do just that. To trick him into being healed.

He gave her a flat look to hide his awe as she pulled away.

It was then that Lotor and his mother appeared, carrying blankets and water.

Princess Allura turned to him. “You will turn your eyes now, Lotor,” she commanded softly. “And you will not look any further upon this grave until it is a cradle of life.” Her eyes began to glow a deep purple, the fields of the quantum realms aligning with her. She raised up her arms, her fingertips sparking with pure quintessence.

Within her, the growing baby sensed a great change. It stilled briefly, then wiggled in her womb, as if to disjointedly mimic her, raising its hands to press against her belly.

The princess closed her eyes, searching the full of the universal threads for a quintessence signature that matched the remains of what lay in the coffin. It was a similar signature to her own—more muted. Her eyes darted beneath her eyelids. “Come on,” she whispered. “I know you are out there.”

Her spirit soared into the heavens, storming across the wide maps of the multiverse, which were still familiar to her. She then stormed above the firmaments between worlds, seeking out the storages of energy that glimmered like stars to the living.

Princess Allura’s heart skipped as she suddenly felt it. The thread of Allura Singh. She opened her eyes, and the full of her eye sockets glowered purple. “I’ve found her." 

* * *

Allura Singh suddenly leaned against the once-Emperor Lotor in exhaustion. “Oh,” she said, blinking her eyes several times.

He gently grabbed onto her, to help steady her. “Are you alright?” he murmured.

The human woman swallowed hard. “It’s so very strange. I cannot—hardly keep my eyes open,” she complained sleepily. “How long have we been walking? I must…I must sit down here, if that’s alright.”

They had been walking back to the great estates of King Alfor, still weaving their way out of the forest. The lessening foliage and distant sight of mountains suggested they had neared the edge.

The alien man’s face tightened in worry. “We’ve not been walking long, and weakness is not a typical sensation in this realm.” He helped her to sit down, his strong hands taking on her weight as he kneeled with her. “Tell me what is wrong.”

Allura blinked, slowly. Her face twisted in a sleepy curiosity at him. “I feel as though I am being pulled,” she whispered, voice distant. “My ears are ringing. Your voice is—it feels very far away to me.”

Emperor Lotor swallowed down anxious emotion as he tilted up her chin, careful of his claws. He searched her eyes. Then he recoiled in fear when he saw the creeping vines of juniberries slip over her shoulders, and along her arms. “What in…the _stars_ —?”

All around them, the grasses began to morph into juniberries, blooming at her thighs. The woman swooned, her eyes unfocusing as she tried to catch herself. Her hand hit the grass, and around it, little juniberries popped up, merrily weaving about her. “I’m so—very tired, Lotor. I think I must lay down, if you do not mind.”

The once-emperor’s breath hitched. He watched in confusion and fear as the flowers began to glow brighter and more numerous around her. “This cannot be,” he whispered suddenly. “For you have not even explored the various worlds possible to you. You cannot yet move on to what you do not know.”

Her elbows sunk against the grass, and she laid back in a sigh of contentment. “It feels so very warm to lay here like this. Do try it.” She tried to twitch her fingers, but the vines were already growing over her hands, holding her in place.

Lotor’s eyes misted. His purple face pulled in great pain as he kneeled beside her, reaching out with trembling fingers. “You are—you are leaving me, Miss Singh.”

Her exhausted eyes turned to him. “Am I?” she whispered, confused. A flower bloomed across her cheek, and suddenly she felt fear at the sight of his own.

In that moment, she looked so innocent and small that the emperor grabbed for the flowers wrapping around her arm, and he sliced them hard with his claws. “Witchcraft,” he seethed in panic, his mind racing wildly. “Miss Singh—someone seeks your spirit. You cannot give in, or else you may be victim to a sorcerer, a conjurer of the dead. I have seen it before.”

The woman blinked, and suddenly, she froze, the contentment in her eyes draining away. “Victim?”

“Yes.” He pressed his lips together. He had failed Allura once. He would not fail her again. “I will not see you become some conjurer’s puppet, or a spirit they call for strange séances. This is not the way of the realm, to be so suddenly devoured. But fear not, I will protect you.”

He set his hand over hers to offer her warm.

Her dark fingers weakly curled around his. She held still. “I’m so tired,” she whispered. “Whatever it is—I can’t fight it.”

“I will fight it for you,” he declared, his voice roughening. “No one will take your peace before your time.”

And then he grabbed deep into the vines, and with all of his strength, he pulled them out from the earth in a splintering yank.

* * *

On earth, in the land of India, one Princess Allura cried out in pain, her eyes squeezing shut as her body lurched forward. Her hand sunk into the dirt pile to steady herself—and suddenly, she felt strong hands wrap around her waist, steadying her, pulling her away from the edge of the grave.

It was Lotor, his voice catching. “I’ve got you,” he murmured in fear.

She leaned back against him, almost limp as her scattered quintessence attempted to resew itself. Her white curls and the back of her pink dress picked up the dirt that covered his body. But she was too dazed and pained to care.

Within her, the baby began to fuss, fluttering about in her womb. The combination left her breathless and leaning against Lotor Dalir, who desperately tried to run his fingers through her hair, murmuring words of comfort to her.

Before she knew it, Princess Allura was sitting in the dirt, gasping for air, the glow around her dying away. Through the odd ringing in her ears, she heard Lotor’s voice sharpen with a demand for a blanket. She was shivering in his arms from the failed resurrection—feeling the cold of the universe—

A presence had violently interrupted her.

And she began to sob, her eyes watering hard. For she knew that presence intimately, his quintessence as familiar to her as her own. Even as she felt a soft blanket cover her, and the murmur of Lotor Dalir’s velvet voice return to her, catching in great worry— _she knew that presence_.

Princess Allura’s pale hand reached out to cover her swollen belly, a raw crack opening in her soul.

“Lotor,” she cried, her voice a rasp. “He has her.”

The human man was stroking her temple, still holding her tight. “Who has her?”

She broke. “The emperor. Your counterpart. His spirit—he lashed against me.” Fear stormed through her, and she trembled there in the dirt and in Lotor’s arms. “He guards her.”

And so the princess remained in the human man’s arms as she cried, her mind fragmenting at the feeling of Emperor Lotor turned against her once more in spite.

* * *

Back in the quantum realm, Emperor Lotor peered at the great source vine he had severed, his yellow sclerae narrowing. And, after a closer inspection, he dropped the vine in genuine fright, his eyes widening. A cold water stormed down his spine.

The juniberries carried with them the tingling power of one Princess Allura of Altea—and something of a combination between himself and her.

The quintessence of a _baby._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! Thanks again for everyone who voted on tumblr for the story they wanted to see updated! I'll be working on my other stories in the background too. I've started on TSL's next chapter and have some already started for Court of Miracles...
> 
> At the moment, I've been having these weird spurts where I can crank out a lot in a little time. It's so strange, haha, especially because it feels like Voltron fandom has been dying lately (fewer stories, fewer people reviewing chapters, etc.). Usually that would make me sad/less productive, but I see myself being around for a long time yet because writing Lotura is one of the few areas of normalcy in my life right now, LOL. So I hope you all stick around with me too! I'm positive we can captain this legacy ship through to the next reboot and have fun together as a closer community! 
> 
> I hope you all are still doing okay in quarantine or staying safe/healthy in places that have lifted restrictions right now. 
> 
> Please review with your thoughts, constructive criticisms, questions, or requests! Thank you!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time: 
> 
> LunarMagnolia: Omg wow, thank you for your long and thoughtful reviews as always!! I really do think that Zarkon would try his hardest to repair his relationship with his son. And alsjdfsaldfj you ask a good question about Honerva being healed! We’ll have to see what happens there! I’m sure we’ll get to answering all of your questions, muahahaha. Thank you again! And thank you for sticking around too; you help keep this ship floating! 
> 
> Star-gazer: Yooo thankie for reading and reviewing! 
> 
> Sophtt: Ahhh thank you dear for those kind words! I hope that I can continue to delight you with this story! I think you’re onto something regarding Allura Singh playing messenger between Emperor Lotor and Princess Allura. Thanks again for reviewing! 
> 
> Fishy_eith_legs: Yooo smiley faces are just as valid as words, haha. Thanks for reading and reviewing! 
> 
> Wallflwr97: Guh, I’m so happy to hear that Lotor’s emotion came across in that first scene! It made me tear up to write it, but it felt right to write it? Haha. As always, your reviews mean so much, and I’m so excited to hear that you’re continuing to enjoy this story!! Thank you so much for your support on these stories!! 
> 
> Espanholina: My heart breaks for VLD Lotura too, guh! I just want these babs to be happy, but they seem to develop such drama when I just let my fingers type whatever they want a;jsflsafdj. Eee, I’m so happy you caught that little detail of Lotor changing for Allura instead of Allura fixing him. I feel like a lot of stories perpetuate that women must fix/rescue men, but I’d like to think that Lotor Dalir would become marriage material because he wants to be worthy of Allura and is a grown man, not because she does all the emotional labor, haha. Oof, if you almost cried last chapter, I hope your tears have dried by now! And I hope you enjoy this next chapter, thank you so much for reviewing!!

It was quiet at the gravesite of Allura Singh for a time as Lotor held the princess. His heart sank for too many reasons as he cradled her, attempting to comfort her overwhelmed mind and soothe the searing ache in her head, all while his own soul began to crumble. His eyes misted as he wrapped his arms around her more tightly, the dirt of the grave messing her pretty dress—his own sweat and tears mixing with her own—

Zarkon moved to them, gently turning Princess Allura’s chin, searching her eyes and feeling for her heartbeat. Honerva kneeled down to them as well, her purple skirts dampening in the mud and dirt. She placed another blanket around them as the princess shivered.

Honerva warned, ““This does not bode well for either of them.” She stared, haunted, at the coffin below.

Princess Allura’s scarred fingers tightened in the material of Lotor’s shirt. She blinked several times, her heart still pounding. “I can,” she rasped, “try again.” She inhaled shakily, on the border of a sob. She’d felt him. He’d tried to pull her apart. “I must bring her back now—she may be in danger.”

Lotor stilled. His voice broke. “As are you. I can’t lose you both.”

The resewing threads of her power began to tighten up, and she gently pulled away from him, holding her hands over her swollen belly. She suddenly felt nauseated and dizzy, and she closed her eyes, fighting down a sickening need to vomit. The baby within her was very unhappy. She could feel its fear, as if it had sensed a loss of some kind as well.

Emperor Lotor’s vehemence in tearing through her power had left the baby floundering for safety, rocking tight within her. No doubt, it felt her rapid heartbeat and her tears. She stroked her belly with shaking fingers, attempting to weave an energy field of calmness around the baby within her womb. “Do not fear,’” she whispered to it, her fingers beginning to glow purple. “It will be alright, I promise.”

The baby kicked lightly in response to feeling her voice directed at it.

And then it began to calm, lulled by her energy field and her increasingly deep breaths as she fought to calm herself. Her watery eyes stared down at the coffin below.

What had the spirit world afforded the lonely and innocent Allura Singh? Had she stumbled across Emperor Lotor by accident? Or had he preyed upon her, watching her awaken and pulling her aside to torment her as a proxy for his anger?

The princess recalled images of Lotor’s face twisting in hate against her. She flinched.

She eventually said to the human Lotor beside her, voice steeling, “I will bring your Allura back. For I understand now what orbits around her, and I will not let that beast of a man harass her spirit anymore. Nor will he catch me surprised again.” Her breath hitched. “You will be happy together, if I have any say in it.”

And then a well of anger worked through her, her baby still protected within its calming field.

She raised her hands to the sky once more, and the whole of the quintessence field responded.

* * *

Emperor Lotor stared at the dying juniberry vine, haunted with the remnants of Princess Allura’s power. He turned to Allura Singh, his alien eyes tight with a great turmoil.

The human woman was still dazed, yawning as she subconsciously raised one hand to her lower abdomen, stroking it as if she were with child. “I feel heavy,” she whispered, her voice breaking in an odd way. Her dazed expression pulled in pain. “Am I—?” She looked down at herself in some great distance and awe and fear.

Lotor reached out to her, gently grabbing onto her hand and pulling it away. He was careful with his claws not to injure her. His eyes began to water. “No. I believe you may feel the residual presence of the one who called you.”

Allura stared up at him, searching his eyes. Her pretty face pulled with pain. “Why are you upset? Did you not save me?”

She was warm the way humans were. It was a comforting feeling. But he pulled away from her then, knowing that it would be the last welcoming touch from any Allura he would ever experience. “Perhaps I have damned you instead,” he admitted, voice catching. He ran a frazzled hand through his hair. “Forgive me, I know not how to explain it.” His eyes began to burn harder. His hands began to tremble. “I thought it was a conjurer—those demon sorcerers who prey on our kind, when all we desire is peace.” He looked to her, desperate. “The souls of those who have returned from such are fragmented and broken, for many sorcerers do not know what they are doing. I did not want that for you.”

She reached out to him, gently grabbing onto his sharp chin. “—Lotor,” she said softly. “What is wrong? You can tell me.”

His lips pulled back in a sob, revealing sharp fangs. “Do not despise me, please, Miss Singh.” He blinked rapidly. “Please. I am….I am fond of you, and I only desired to protect you. I didn’t know. I didn’t.”

Growing more awake now, she narrowed her eyes in concern. “Know what?”

As they spoke, the dead juniberry vine began to glow, its brown leaves fleshing out into green.

The fallen emperor’s voice was halted. “The one who sought to conjure you was no sorcerer. I recognized her energy when I touched the vine, and I know why you feel such physical connection to her.” He did not pull his chin away from her hand but instead submitted to her touch, leaning into it, trembling. His voice broke. “She is the Princess Allura, from my world.”

Her fingers slipped away from his chin in surprise. “What?”

He sat there in the grasses with her, the dead vines still hanging strangely about them. “I’m not certain how she knows of you." His purple skin pulled so tightly across his face that he looked utterly ill. “Unless she has searched for me, and in finding me, desires to keep you away.” He dared to reach out, to stroke her cheek. “Perhaps for the best, for she will not harm you. She may even know how to send you back to your own world, with the Lotor who races machines and—and who loves you as his equal.” The fallen emperor looked utterly broken as he whispered, “For you are too full of life yet, to be here.”

Allura’s eyes began to burn. “I don’t understand what you mean. You think your Allura is trying to…bring me back—?”

He nodded, and then he swallowed hard, biting his lip. He looked down at the grounds around them, seeing that the vines were beginning to revive, the juniberries crawling back to one Allura Singh.

He turned to her, words rushing from his mouth in a flurry. “When she recalls you to life to keep you away from me, will you tell her of who I am? What happened? Please.” Tears slid down his sharp face—his expression contorted in such human emotion that for a moment, there was little difference between himself and the one known as Lotor Dalir. “For she is pregnant, and I—I sense that it is my own child.”

The vines were beginning to wrap around Allura Singh’s legs once more, the action inspiring a great exhaustion in her.

Allura Singh tried to blink away her tiredness to focus, a spike of fear going through her as she felt the vines hum with an even greater intention than before. She looked down, then back up at the alien Lotor. “A _baby_ ,” she whispered suddenly. Something in her mind clicked as she ran her hand down her flat stomach once more. An alarm rocked through her as the juniberries glowed brightly. “No—you must come with me—please—”

“I cannot,” he said, velvet voice rough. The vines did not move to him. She was not resurrecting him. He fell silent, his tears falling faster. He reached for Allura’s hand, intertwining his fingers with her own. “She does not want me.”

She weakly grabbed back, making a noise of sorrow and confusion. “She _needs_ you,” she whispered. “And—and the baby too.”

“What use have they for a fallen man like me?” His sharp jaw quivered. “But tell them my truth, please. The world will not look kindly upon her if she keeps a child of my blood. I want—I want her to know, at least, that I would—” His throat tightened. Even now, he felt a great swell of emotion. Protective emotion.

Once, in a better life, he might have been able to offer an empire to his family. Kisses and hugs and proud little tokens of affection. Now, all he could perhaps manage through Allura Singh was a clearing of his name—that this daughter or son of his would know their father was not cruel or evil, and that Princess Allura herself would perhaps remember him fondly.

The strength of the baby’s energy suggested she was far into the pregnancy. That she had chosen to keep it, despite all the slew of insults the Galra and other groups would spit at her.

“Maybe,” Allura Singh whispered tightly, “she could…bring you back? Once she knows that you are kind?” It seemed to be taking more of her energy to even speak or remain sitting up. The juniberries were crawling up her spine, blooming across her skin and into her hair. She had begun to swoon.

Lotor attempted to steady her, opening his large Galran arms. His fingers slipped through the vines of the juniberries without breaking them, and he dared to embrace her to him. The vines of life still denied him, ignoring his presence entirely to continue blooming across the human. "She may not believe you." 

Allura leaned against him, the vines stretching with her. “I want you to come with me,” she cried lightly, voice petulant. “I feel tired, and I don’t—I don’t want you to be alone here. No one should be alone.”

His heart cracked hard. He leaned his cheek into her white-curled hair, his tears streaking down his alien face. “I will not be alone. And I can await your return, perhaps to also meet this counterpart of mine who loves you. No doubt, the princess can return you to him.”

By then, the human woman was beginning to lull to sleep, the juniberries transforming from their bright pink to the brightest of whites. She leaned her heavy cheek against his plated armor, her eyes beginning to close. “I miss him,” she managed to whisper. “My favorite—peacock of a man—”

Lotor closed his eyes, the light of her paining him. She was glowing bright as a star now, her essence leaving through the vines of the juniberries to slip through the firmaments and travel as a silent star. The thought of losing an Allura all over again—even one as tiny and human and round-eared as Allura Singh, whose heart was not his—made him crumble.

He tightened his arms around her subconsciously, her form fading beneath the glow.

And then suddenly, a sharp pain struck him.

Lotor’s face twisted with a hiss as he recoiled from Allura, his claws digging into the grasses.

His cheek stung.

He felt something hot and wet begin to trail down his face and realized, crying out, that the juniberry vines had stuck him, growing thorns just for the occasion. Cold blood slipped down his cheek, rapidly healing from the effects of the surrounding realm.

For one wild moment, he felt a great pressure holding him away from Allura Singh.

And then it was gone, as was the light.

He opened blurry, blue eyes to the sight of empty vines, slipping back into the grasses with the last of Allura Singh’s soul.

That did it.

The emperor heaved himself forward, daring to reach for the vines that had struck him under Princess Allura’s power. He was careful with his claws, attempting to touch just one leaf with trembling fingers. “Do not leave me here,” he begged. “Please, can you not feel me? My intentions?”

His vision blurred hard, the vines continuing to slip away—and with them, his final link to the living Princess Allura and to their child. The leaves slipped through his fingers, just like everything else he had ever longed for. His cheek still burned red with the slap she’d given him for attempting to hold Allura Singh closer.

Lotor’s lips quivered oddly, and his elfin ears drooped.

And for the longest time, he simply sat there in the field, his large hands empty. His white hair swayed with a comforting wind that sought to lull him back into peace. But he felt cold—a deep unsettling void within, that the princess had once again denied him.

A single juniberry remained in the field with him, but it did not hold the power of Princess Allura. Instead, it was just a merry, little flower, dancing in the wind. Its petals swayed in a way that reminded him of the heavy earrings Allura Singh had worn.

He reached out and shakily stroked the petals, suddenly fond of it in a listless manner.

It was the quantum realm attempting to cheer him up—to smooth over his rattled mind and make him forget his worries and fears—

The emperor sniffled, then pulled his hand away from the flower, as if in fear that even touching it would ruin its sweet, merry sway. 

* * *

Meanwhile, the soul of Allura Singh stormed through the firmaments as a star, her collective energy siphoning along ley lines, twisting lightly through the shape of the atmosphere.

Princess Allura’s breath caught. She was still wrapped in Lotor Dalir’s arms, his calloused thumb stroking her sweaty temple. Her eyes were bagged now from the energy it took to manipulate matter on another plane of reality—to keep Emperor Lotor away from the soul of Allura Singh. The princess’s face was streaked with haggard tears. Her raised arms were beginning to tremble hard. “I’ve—I’ve got her.”

And then the glow around her body began to brighten as the soul slipped to her, yawning like petals of an opening flower.

The princess grunted as she directed the energy down to the coffin, pulling along with it a simple well of quintessence. The hole in the earth began to glow, and she felt Lotor’s hands pause upon her. His breath held.

And for one wild moment, the whole of the gravesite warped with an energy wave.

Then, Princess Allura’s arms fell to her sides, and she collapsed against Lotor, breathing unsteadily. One of her hands moved to her pregnant belly, where her baby was still cradled tight in an energy field of calm. In her exhaustion, it began to flicker away. But the baby seemed to be blissfully asleep.

“Are you alright?” Lotor murmured to her, voice tight. “Did it work?”

She closed her eyes, then patted one of his hands. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Go to her now—before she realizes where she is. I’m fine.”

The human man’s eyes began to mist all over again. He pressed a quick kiss to her sweaty curls, and then he gently began to pull away, looking to his father and mother for help.

Zarkon kneeled down. “I will steady her.”

And so Lotor left the princess, looking back once in a strange apprehension as he slid down the hole to the coffin. His dark boots hit the small puddle of water welling along the corner. His heart pounded madly, the blood rushing hot across his face in a mix of anxiety. Tears blurred his vision as he reached out to the cold, wet coffin lid.

Just as his fingers touched it, Princess Allura’s voice ripped through the air, tight. “Wait.”

Lotor recoiled from the coffin, in fear. He turned to look at her. “What is it?”

Zarkon was helping her to sit up, pulling off her blankets to fan at her sweaty temples. The princess’s face was sheepish. “She may be naked.”

He blinked. And then he turned back to the coffin. “As if I have not seen her naked before,” he said, voice strained, as in a mix of hilarity and frustration. “It does not matter.”

Princess Allura said helplessly, “Well, resurrections are rather topsy turvy things after so long.” She weakly pushed the blanket toward him. “It’s very against my culture for one to be naked in public. And I think any Allura would prefer to be covered before her family.”

The man eyed her, blinking away tears. He grabbed onto the ledge of the dirt and heaved himself up, pulling the blanket with him. “Of course.”

And then he turned back to the coffin. It was still silent as death, the roots still surged into its side. He hesitated, then with utter trust in Princess Allura, kneeled and dared to open the lid, which was heavy. He groaned, and it groaned as well from the water damage and dirt.

With great trepidation, he looked down.

And there, instead of a decayed body, was a living, sleeping Allura Singh. Her pretty face was flush with a brilliant life, her skin still glowing slightly from the transfer and resurrection of her body. Upon her cheeks were the bloom of the same flowers she had clenched tightly in her hands. Her white hair streamed in a curled halo around her.

Lotor Dalir broke.

His knees weakened. He dared to reach out to her, his fingers trembling. And a noise escaped the back of his throat—a low moan of emotion. The woman before him was still clothed in her motor suit, but her dark shirt beneath it had mottled and threaded away with holes. Her jeans had darkened with mud and were full of holes up her knees, her little bare toes wet from the stream that had once flowed through her coffin. Around her, the remains of broken tree roots lay, where they had once crossed through her ribs.

Allura Singh’s chest rose and fell with steady breath.

And when Lotor’s calloused fingers dared to touch her hand, her living warmth and the beat of her heart swelled into him.

He thought himself hallucinating, remembering the cold dead of her when he’d pressed a kiss to her temple before they’d closed the casket. His breath hitched, tears slipping down his face. “Allura,” he begged. Her name ripped from him in a rough plea. “ _Moosh-moosh-am_.”

He slid his fingers through hers, displacing the odd flowers she held onto.

Lotor began to cry as he felt her small fingers—so lithe and familiar—weakly curl against his.

Allura’s breath halted in an odd way, and a small groan escaped her. She turned her head, her white brows knitting together. “ _Five more minutes_ ,” she begged in a slurred Punjabi, her sweet voice garbled and hoarse.

The man’s tears slipped down his face, even as a near-hysterical huff escaped him. “ _No_ ,” he murmured back in Punjabi, voice shaking. He moved closer, still kneeling at her coffin. He nudged her lightly. “ _You’ve slept quite enough. Open your eyes for me, love. Please._ ”

Allura whined again, as if it were any other day of him waking her up from sleep.

But slowly, she opened up her brilliant, bleary eyes, which were disoriented and dilated wide, as if she had surged through the blackest of galaxies in space. She blinked several times, silent. And then, as if her soul fully reconnected with her body, a light glimmered in her eyes. “ _Oh,_ ” she breathed in awe.

Weakly, she raised her hand. Flower petals fell from her warm fingers as she touched his face.

The movement radiated heat between the both of them.

Realization overcame her. “ _Your skin_.” She disjointedly patted his dirty cheek, still sleepy. “ _Not purple_.”

Lotor’s face twisted in a mix of joy and confusion, leaning into her touch to kiss her palm.

Allura’s face stretched with a sleepy, delighted smile. “ _My Lotor_.” She closed her eyes, leaning a heavy cheek against the pillow within the coffin, her curls turning and catching the silver of the moon. “ _My peacock man_.”

The words still slurred heavily from her lips. Lotor’s joy faltered at the sight of her trying to fall back asleep.

He desperately stroked her face. “Do not—Allura, please do not fall back asleep.” His voice was watery in a weak laugh. “I fear you might not wake up.”

She made a petulant noise. “ _So tired. Cold_ ,” she whined at him. She weakly made grabby hands for him. “ _Lay with me?_ ”

Lotor’s heart cracked hard. He began to pull the blanket off of his shoulder, realizing that Allura had no idea her shirt had rotted out, or that her jeans were halfway falling apart from the waters. “ _I will lay with you_ ,” he promised, voice halted. “ _But not here_.” He protectively settled the blanket around her to protect her modesty and keep her warm, tucking the material beneath her. He sniffled, trying to hide that he was crying, thankful in some way that she was a little out of it. Surely, if she knew he were crying, she’d pull on his ear. And then she’d demand to know where his usual earring was, and why he was so dirty, and why they were in a deep hole in the earth—and her whole fragile contentment in that moment would come crashing down in a domino effect of horror.

He lifted her into his arms, carefully standing with her.

And it was there under the Indian moon that Allura leaned her head into the crook of his neck, her feet dripping with the final remnants of the stream that had answered her call for company. A few pieces of tree root slipped from her curls to fall to the dirt.

Lotor closed his eyes and pressed a fervent kiss to the top of her head, his breath catching.

And then he raised her up higher in his arms, silently begging his father to take her.

One overwhelmed Zarkon held out his arms, swallowing back great emotion as he gently pulled Allura Singh into his arms.

The princess beside him and Honerva as well helped to steady her as they lifted her over the edge of the steep drop and onto the grass of the aboveground. Allura Singh barely made a noise now, still on the border of deep sleep.

Zarkon’s voice was rough. “Why does she not awaken fully?”

Princess Allura leaned forward on her knees, holding onto her pregnant belly as she inspected her human counterpart, her eyes widening and ears flicking back in awe. She was still breathless from exertion, her face streaked with tears from the transfer. She whispered softly, “It was a long journey for her.” She hovered glowing fingers over the girl, inspecting her work to find nothing out of place. The human had every nerve, every synapse fully restored. The princess gazed upon her and felt an odd sadness overcome her, for Allura Singh had few scars and was beautiful, with an obviously flat stomach.

She suddenly hid her own scarred fingers in the material of her sari, feeling rough and moose-sized compared to her human counterpart.

Her voice grew quiet. “She will be sleepy for a few days yet, especially because I had to gather her energy twice.” She swallowed hard, thinking of Emperor Lotor, wondering what stories this human Allura could tell of him.

In her final attempt to bring back Allura Singh, the man who was the father of her child had not lashed out at her. But instead, he’d reached for her.

She’d felt it.

His fingers attempted to weave into her power, a plead within him.

The princess’s eyes watered, and she squeezed them shut, forcing a great smile upon her face at the sight of the human Lotor Dalir. He was crying in joy as he dragged himself up out of the dirt. His limbs were shaking in a mix of adrenaline and relief as he pulled himself up by Allura Singh, hiding his nose in her long hair and wrapping his arm around her.

Allura Singh’s full lips stretched, even in sleep, and Lotor dared to press a kiss to her cute, little rounded ear.

His love for her was so entirely evident in that second, Princess Allura’s smile grew genuine, her pretty face stretching as she wiped sweat off of her brow. “Do you believe me now, Lotor? That I can bring her back?”

The man made a noise into Allura Singh’s hair. “I will never doubt you again,” he murmured, voice tight in joy, voice choked with tears. “Never ever.” And he raised up on his elbow, daring to stroke the sleeping woman’s face, before turning to Princess Allura.

In his eyes, his soul was fully bared to her. And he seemed so young and so innocent and so full of hope that the sight of him rose her heart further.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

The princess wiped her face of tears. “It is the least I can do, after you have all so kindly taken me in, and…and put up with me and all of my infirmities.” She swallowed hard. “It feels good to be useful again.”

Lotor wove one of his fingers into Allura Singh’s thick, silky curls, in awe of the texture. That any of this was real. His voice broke. “I could never repay this debt. Not in a million years.”

Princess Allura’s lips stretched, and she tiredly rubbed her belly. “Well, consider it an advance then, for everything I might yet get sick on, or else whatever that the little one might ruin.” Her white brows knitted together. “I’ve a terrible premonition that Altean strength mixed with Galran claws might be a bit…destructive.” And then she looked down, her elfin ears drooping at the thought of being trouble to them.

One misty-eyed Zarkon dared to reach out to her, grabbing onto her scarred fingers with a gentleness that defied his hulking frame. The man murmured to her, voice rough with emotion, “You owe us nothing. The life of Allura Singh means more than you know.” His aged eyes searched hers. “As does _your_ life, princess.”

She dared to look up, vulnerable and fearful of rejection now that her counterpart lived. She scratched at her elbow, her face flushing. “I can’t even keep a dress clean,” she joked weakly, waving at her dirty self.

The father gently huffed at her, in disapproval of her own self-deprecation. They were all dirty and wet and sweat-soaked. “The dress can be replaced.” He squeezed her hand. “You cannot be.”

And something about the way Zarkon held her hand, and the way Honerva came down to sit beside her, inspired a huge well of tears. The world blurred so hard that she did not see Lotor lovingly stroke the cheek of Allura Singh, then move to sit up. But she heard his movements.

Before she knew it, the boy had wrapped her up in a tight hug.

Her blue and purple eyes widened, and suddenly, even more tears slipped from her.

But this time, her tears were of happiness—that somehow, this human family had room for two Alluras.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story notes: The term "moosh-moosh-am" is a Farsi term of endearment that translates to "my mousy mouse," in which "moosh" means "mouse" in Persian. This term will likely make into main Adrenaline Rush because I love, love that this term of endearment is a play on Lotor Dalir being a cat person and cat-like himself, calling Allura his mousy mouse...
> 
> Also, hi everyone! We're moving toward the latter end of COVID quarantines, and it's both a very anxious and hopeful time for me. I hope that this truly will be the end of major waves/outbreaks, but I'm also worried that perhaps it won't be. I am slightly encouraged by articles about immunity and vaccine progress. In the meantime, I'm still distracting myself largely with lotura stories, haha. And I hope you're all doing well too! 
> 
> This was a really fun installment for me to try writing, because I've been building toward the resurrection of Allura Singh for a long time now. And I've been wanting so badly to write Princess Allura and Allura Singh at the same time, and the reunion of Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh. This should set us up to get to such scenes! 
> 
> Also, I see that AO3 updated its email processes and is flashing some warning messages at the top of the screen, but I did want to alert you all that I've adjusted my email settings so that my provider doesn't see AO3 as junk email. So please know I should still receive your review if you would be so kind as to write me one! Please let me know your thoughts on this chapter and if there's any scene you'd like to see! Thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time: 
> 
> LunarMagnolia: Ahhh bless you dear for your wonderful and extended reviews, as always. They really mean a lot. I really feel your pain about Emperor Lotor because I just so badly want him to be happy, bu there’s still so much in the way of that, guh. I do have hopes that Allura Singh will help exonerate him! Also yaaaas, Lotor Dalir tears are like unicorn tears that can heal anything LOL. And oof, yeah, Princess Allura definitely has a lot of stressors in this story. I really enjoy writing her because she’s trying so hard to do the right things, and she’s so vulnerable too. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! 
> 
> Wallflwr97: GUH, yeah as I was writing the last chapter, my heart hurt writing the juniberry vine scene! Emperor Lotor is trying so hard. ;A; But yaaas, at least moosh-moosh-am and peacock man are reunited again! Hopefully more cuteness and reconciliation to come soon, with lots of additional emotional catharsis because I think Lotor Dalir has a lot of emotion he's internalized that will need to get out in the form of tears, haha. In the meantime, thank you so very much for your very kind reviews and support! I’m so happy you’re still hanging out in Lotura space to squeal with me over this ship, lol!! <3 
> 
> Star-gazer: Oof, yeah, Emperor Lotor is definitely on an uphill battle to clear his name and reconcile with his family. But in good news, Allura Singh knows the truth about him, and I think that will tip the scales in his favor in a lot of ways! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I really appreciate it!
> 
> Espanholina: I’m so excited to hear that this story was able to make your day, and it just means so much that you’ve stayed in Lotura fandom despite all the quieting down of Voltron fandom. Gosh, I’m so happy Singh is back too. I think we’re going to have some fun and cute and emotional shenanigans happening soon! And Loll yeah the tags on tumblr alter based on the popular tags in the moment, so every once in a blue moon, Dalingh or AR will make it on that list, and my heart soars at the sight! I really appreciate your reviews so much, and gosh, I hope to publish a real book someday too, haha. It means a lot that you’d want to buy it! Thank you so much for your kind words and your support! 
> 
> NickyADon: LOLLL you know how much I love to make Lotor suffer, haha. His angst is just such a fine wine to me, I guess because it means all the more when things work out for him for all of his struggles and pain. And haha, a tennis match over the human Allura! That’s such a funny image, and now I can’t unthink it, loll. But yeah that’s kinda what happened. XD Thank you so much for continuing to read and review my stories, even during all of these hard times. I hope you stay safe and healthy too!

For the next hour, the Dalir family and the Princess Allura attempted to reset the gravesite. There was no way to hide that it had been ransacked, but it was also not rare for one wayward Lotor Dalir to fly in, to care for the lands. The official story would be that he’d decided to replant flowers over her grave.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Princess Allura complained lightly. “Will you not let me help at all?”

Lotor and Zarkon were shoveling dirt back in, hiding an empty coffin. Daybreak would be soon, which meant they had to work fast.

To her right, Honerva sat atop a blanket in a swirl of her skirts. She lazily stroked the temple of the sleeping Allura Singh before her. The girl wavered in and out of consciousness, occasionally murmuring unintelligibly in sleep. “You should enjoy the show,” Honerva said lightly. “It is not every day you see men do such back-breaking work for the sake of a woman.”

Princess Allura’s elfin ears drooped. Lotor and Zarkon were wet and dirty and exhausted. Lotor was aching to be at his Allura’s side, his eyes darting to her in worry and awe every so often. “They are strong men, but it will take them vargas to fill such a hole. Truly, with my strength, I could make this go all the faster.”

Curled up on the blanket, one Allura Singh twitched in dreams, a noise like the word _unicorn_ escaping from her lips, along with a demand for orange juice. Then she shivered, still chilled from the waters that had run over her underground.

Honerva protectively rubbed the girl’s arm to offer her heat. Her gold eyes carried a tumult of emotion in doing so, occasionally pausing to check her over. She said distractedly to Princess Allura, “You’re pregnant, child. You should not perform such manual labor. Recalling our Allura was risk enough.” 

The princess looked down at her human counterpart, her white brows knitting together. Slowly, she pulled off her own blanket and swept it over the girl. “The child within me has survived the end of the multiverse and near-death. We fell from the heavens and crash-landed in your world. Surely, spreading a little dirt around will not endanger its life or mine.”

Meanwhile, Allura Singh’s blue and purple eyes—a slightly more muted tone than the princess’s—blearily opened with the action of the blanket and the heat of Honerva’s hand. She gazed half-lidded at the shadows of Lotor and Zarkon as they filled her own, now-empty grave. Then she closed her eyes once more, slipping back into exhaustion. She burrowed into her blanket, curling in on herself as if she were a little sea shell.

Honerva sighed, still stroking the white curls of Allura Singh, lulling her to peaceful sleep. Something in the older woman’s actions made her seem frail—as if afraid that Allura Singh would disappear if she stopped touching her. “Will you stop at nothing, child?”

“No,” said the princess with a tired merriment. Then she held her rounded belly as she awkwardly moved to stand. Her baby bump was beginning to grow in ways that made her front feel heavy and unbalanced. But her dirtied, pink sari fluttered about her as she gained strong footing. “Step out of the way, human family. I shall fill this hole quickly while you rest your limbs.”

The two had not yet even accomplished burying the closed coffin yet, its lid still shining beneath the Indian moonlight.

Lotor turned to her, breathless. “I cannot ask that of you.”

She made a face at him—the way one unimpressed sibling might look at another. “Out,” she commanded, lifting her chin. It was another glimmer of her past self, which had commanded armies and led civilizations to freedom. “I know you’re not asking it of me. And truly, I do appreciate your sensitivity to my condition, and your discretion with asking me to use my powers. But I am not made of Unilu beads.”

Zarkon paused at that, angling a brow.

She corrected herself, flushing. “Um, very breakable things that fall apart the moment you try to do something with them.” She began to wring her hands. “Unless this is somehow an offense, for me to demand that I assist. I don’t actually want to offend you.”

Lotor watched her for a time, his lips stretching. His tears had tried clean rivers through the dirt on his face. “How much like my Allura you are,” he said fondly. He rested his hand on the handle of the shovel. “Always wanting to help, unable to sit down, even when it is for problems that are not yours to worry about.” His eyes narrowed in curiosity. “What will you do?”

She hesitated. “Well, I would need you and your father to move out of the way. And I could get this done in one fell swoop.”

Lotor and Zarkon looked at each other, a silent conversation between them. They began to move as she requested, climbing from the pit. Lotor moved to sit down by the sleeping Allura Singh, with clods of dirt running down the frame of his body. He lovingly turned to her, reaching out to touch her shoulder, only to hesitate at waking her from a happy slumber. He rather anxiously watched the lines of her shoulders raise and lower instead.

And then a great glow stole his attention away.

The Princess Allura activated her powers, narrowing her eyes at the large dirt pile remaining beside the empty grave. The dirt began to tremble and glow purple. “Come on, you,” she murmured under her breath. “ _Move_.”

And suddenly, it did. The pile of dirt began slip down the ledge of the grave.

Lotor’s eyes widened.

In a swift swirl, the pit was filled in completely, the empty coffin hidden away from all eyes, with just a few old flowers hanging upside from the dirt, their roots in a tangle. The princess lowered her arms, her body losing its glow. “There,” she said breathlessly. She moved to rub her baby bump, eyeing her work critically. Then, she managed a happy smile. “Is that not better?” 

And as she stood there, one Allura Singh opened her eyes again, her body having goose-bumped from the odd power. She chilled even in the warm night, her lips opening slightly in a noise of confusion.

Lotor moved to tuck the blankets more firmly around the sleeping girl. “It is much better, princess,” he murmured, voice strained. His heart clenched hard as his eyes misted once more, in overwhelmed awe. He stroked Allura Singh’s cheek to calm her and offer his warmth. “What have we done to deserve such gifts.”

The princess gazed upon him in a sad fondness, and then her eyes shifted to the awake Allura Singh. “You are kind to us. Unlike many others.”

The human woman stared back in a confused daze, not quite seeing much beyond a blur of pink and white, and hearing her own voice. She made a noise, turning onto her back, moving toward the warmth of the familiar male hand stroking her cheek. She whined lightly, “ _What is—going on?_ ” But her speech was garbled Punjabi, which the princess did not understand.

Lotor leaned down and murmured in Allura Singh’s ear, “ _Go back to sleep, moosh-moosh-am_.” He dared to press a kiss against the living warmth of her cheek. “ _We are preparing to take you home_.”

“ _Home?_ ” she murmured tiredly, her voice raising in curiosity. “ _Where are we?_ ”

He hesitated, then whispered to her, “ _Outside. But I will get you to bed_.”

And just like that, she trusted his answer, closing her eyes once more. “So sleepy,” she complained, voice turning to Standard with a groan. “Want—blankie.” Then her eyebrow twitched, along with her nose. And she drifted back into sleep, relaxing against the warm grasses, breathing out deeply.

Lotor stroked her cheek, his eyes misting even as his lips twitched, then quivered.

It was then that his semblance of emotional propriety broke. His eyes watered all over again. As he stroked Allura Singh’s cheek, tears slipped down his dirty cheeks once more. He shakily pulled away, afraid that he would disrupt her sleep, and he tried to wipe his eyes, his breath catching. “I, ah, I must yet plant the new flowers we have brought.”

The Princess Allura eyed him, watching his every move. And then she said softly, “Why don’t you stay with her, and your father and I can plant the flowers? Truly, if she is in need of anything, I imagine you know her best.”

Allura Singh’s white curls glimmered in the moonlight, shining with silvers and blues. Lotor Dalir’s fingers hovered over it, desiring to stroke her hair and yet aware that he was as dirty as the earth. “I would stay with her forever,” he whispered.

“Then do,” the princess commanded in a tease, turning away. She put a hand on her hip, only to feel a little kick in her belly. Her scarred fingers slid over her stomach to comfort her little one. The poor thing had woken up in the midst of all the movement.

She was beginning to feel a deep craving for pickles and ketchup again.

The princess patted her belly, her face twisting slightly. “Not now,” she begged of her child. She was finally being allowed to do constructive things—she simply could not step aside to stuff her face with pickles in that moment.

The child had other ideas.

Its short, little nap had energized its nerves, such that it wiggled about within her. Princess Allura looked down at her belly in consternation, slightly disturbed to see a very small hand imprint against the pink material of her dress. And then suddenly, it was gone.

She pressed her lips together, making a strangled noise in the back of her throat. “What in the heavens has you so unsettled?” she wondered out loud, moving forward. Her bare feet sunk in the mud, but she paid it no mind. “You slept well enough through a resurrection but then throw a tantrum at the thought of planting flowers?”

Honerva looked up at that, her calculating gaze roving over her. “Are you hungry, child?”

The word hunger struck a deep chord within the princess. Suddenly, every fiber in her being rang with need. She grabbed for her swollen belly and exhaled. “I could—eat a pickle or two.”

Even the sound of the word _pickle_ seemed to enrapture the baby within her, such that it wiggled again. Princess Allura’s face twisted lightly in discomfort as the baby kicked at her ribs, but then she exhaled in inane amusement.

Her attempt to appear as a dignified princess was ever-more ruined by this baby, it seemed.

And so she found herself kneeling down in the dirt, munching madly on pickles as she planted flowers beside Zarkon. Her beautiful sari was ruined, her white curls matted with sweat and increasingly with dirt as well. She handled the little arrays of flowers with great care, patting their tiny leaves in desire to see them grow—to overtake the full of the gravesite.

She absent-mindedly grabbed another slice from a jar Honerva had set beside her. Her fingers were speckled with dirt from working with the plants, but she did not hesitate in her hunger.

Zarkon looked up from filling in a hole around a set of flowers her. There was a spark of concern in him. “Is the little one troubling you?”

The princess looked away, leaning forward to grab another plastic holder of flowers. She gently began to shake it from its cage, a few small clods of dirt falling onto her dress. Her voice was muffled from the remains of the pickle slice she was chewing in her mouth. “The baby is quite fine—just in need of sustenance, and a great deal of it.”

Dark eyes slid down to stare at the princess’s fingers. “Do you even realize why?” he demanded softly, his aged face tightening in concern. 

Princess Allura blinked at him, then swallowed.

She looked down at her hands, realizing they were glowing—not of her own volition. She froze in surprise.

The baby had managed to activate her powers, or else it was using its own. The dead leaves on the flower in her hands were swelling back to a lively green.

She squeaked in surprise, dropping the white flower. It sparkled with purple quintessence for a brief time before its glow dampened.

And then she looked down at her swollen belly, grabbing for it in a mix of panic and hilarity. “Stop it, you,” she pleaded to her baby. “I really mean it this time—or else I shall have to eat everything in sight.”

Zarkon asked, his deep voice catching. “Is it…normal for your kind? To do that?”

The tired princess gave him a weary look. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, still rubbing her belly to lull the baby back to sleep. “I’ve heard tales of babies shape-shifting in the womb. I suppose it’s just a check-and-balance to ensure the baby has everything in place. But…” Her elfin ears flicked back, and her voice grew halted. “If I focus…it feels…”

She closed her eyes, knitting her white brows together in wonder.

It felt as though the baby were intentional in its target of the flower’s dead leaves.

That it was now learning how to actively mimic her quintessence manipulations.

A warm heat and a cold water stormed through the princess at the same time. “This is…much too early for such things,” she whispered. Her fingers began to tremble against the pink material of her dress. “Much too early.”

A short distance away, Lotor Dalir held a sleeping Allura Singh in his arms, stroking her temple as she slept. But his blue eyes had tightened upon the princess in worry. “How long do Altean babies usually take to develop?”

“Many movements,” she replied, a mix of wonder and fear overcoming her. “About eleven months in your human time. But…I’m hardly even half-way there.”

“This child is not fully Altean, though, yes?” Lotor murmured, his voice catching. “You called this counterpart of mine a Galran. How long is it for them?”

The princess blinked. A great nervousness overcame her. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’d not—paid attention—”

She hesitantly reached for another pickle slice.

Her heart pounded with the possibility that she could be a mother far sooner than expected. And even stranger, as her fear began to climb, the baby within her stilled. Its forming hands and feet still twitched lightly on occasion, its body testing itself as babies did. But there was a hesitance in it now.

As if it were _trying_ to be quiet, just for her.

* * *

The rest of the night flew by in a blur.

It was nearly daybreak by the time the gravesite of Allura Singh boasted a new wave of white and pink flowers. Lotor Dalir carried Allura Singh in his arms, her head tucked under his chin, as he moved her to the truck. A dirty blanket still covered her modesty.

Princess Allura watched the way Lotor held her human counterpart as if she were glass.

Her eyes began to water as she saw Lotor murmur in Punjabi to Allura Singh. His voice was a velvet lilt—soft and comforting. His entire being seemed to curl toward her. On occasion, the woman in his arms murmured back sleepily, grumping slightly as Lotor slid into the truck’s backseat while still holding her, jostling her slightly.

And then the princess saw the way Lotor collapsed in that seat, leaning his dirty bun back against the headrest, closing his eyes as he simply held onto Allura Singh, breathing in time with her until his chest hitched with emotion once more.

Eventually, Princess Allura looked away, her own eyes misting. A very raw delight and a very deep pain crunched into her, such that she grabbed for her belly again, rubbing it distantly.

Had she felt such devotion in Emperor Lotor’s arms? Had he ever once loved her half as much as his human counterpart so obviously loved Allura Singh? Would he have held her in his lap like that, stroking her arm with a silent need to feel her skin?

She swallowed hard, her skin goose-bumping in deep want for her Lotor’s touch. And yet she felt great unease, her mind swarming with the thought that the Galran would be more likely to choke her.

…Or would he?

“Princess,” came the exhausted baritone voice of Zarkon Dalir.

She flinched, turning away and then forcing a smile upon her dirty face. “Yes?”

The human man held out his hand. “Let us get you strapped in as well for the journey home.” His dark eyes looked her over in worry. Even like this, at times, he reminded her of fuzzy childhood memories—of Emperor Zarkon leaning down and picking her up to soothe her of a skinned knee from running around the castle.

It inspired another deep ache in her, such that her eyes began to well with tears. She grabbed onto his hand and managed to say, voice catching, “I can use your belt of seats just fine. But this is a rather large step into your transport.”

The dirty man looked her over, then gently helped raise her onto the steps. The princess’s face pulled with an emotional pain—that somehow in this strange multiverse, the soul of Zarkon had been preserved. That he was a powerful man with a kind heart beneath a rough, strict exterior.

She sat down in the front passenger seat, then turned to look at Zarkon in confusion and worry. “Oh, but where will Honerva sit?”

And it was then that a frail hand waved up from the back seat. “I fully intend to sleep here,” the mother called. 

The princess’s white brows knitted together. “Are you able to use a belt of the seat in such a position?”

Honerva blearily raised up, her gold eyes catching the dark light like that of a predator. “No, but this is hardly the most dangerous thing I’ve done.”

Allura craned her neck to look backward in the truck, slightly frustrated by how her body was so less flexible than it had ever been. And before she caught sight of Honerva, she saw Lotor cradling her human counterpart, still in awe of her.

The princess’s breath caught hard, her throat tightening in a mix of jealousy and want and sadness and guilt.

She’d not forgotten the sting of Emperor Lotor’s wrath when he’d tried to pull Allura Singh away from her. Her quintessence field still felt a bit raw from the snap, as if it were waiting for another attack instinctively.

The princess’s eyes blurred as she suddenly looked down at her scarred, dirty hands, listlessly folding them in her lap. Perhaps her fate with her own Lotor was darker—perhaps she would never know soft love as Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh knew it.

But her Emperor Lotor _had_ pleaded with her. In that final moment, his own energy had cracked open around her, begging in some way.

He’d not felt like the monster she’d faced in the quintessence field.

Princess Allura could not unsee the image of the sleeping Allura Singh, whose unscarred fingers had tightened innocently into Lotor Dalir’s shirt.

Her counterpart knew this Emperor Lotor.

She had stories to tell.

* * *

It was sunrise by the time the Dalir family returned to their private jet. Lotor set the sleepy Allura Singh down on the bed in the back bedroom of the plane. They were both dirty and sweaty and tired. His white hair straggled down his haggard cheek, his bun halfway falling out.

By then, Allura Singh had woken up enough times to know something was odd.

Her dark hand weakly pressed against the mattress, and her blue and purple eyes—still bleary—attempted to narrow on him as she tried to sit up. The blanket slipped from her, revealing her rotted clothes. The threads of her shirt hung beneath her bared breast. The sleeve of her motor jacket gleamed with green beneath the lights. Mold.

Thick, white curls slipped down her shoulders. “What is—Where—?”

Lotor tiredly steadied her as she sat up, nearly swooning himself in the loss of adrenaline. “It’s alright, love,” he murmured to her. He stood before her and leaned forward, kissing her temple as he lovingly undressed her. “I’ve got you.”

Her white brow quirked in confusion as her fingers tightened in the blankets. “We were….we were walking…”

Her voice was weak, her sweet alto lingering on the last syllable, as if she were still too tired to speak.

His long fingers peeled away the remains of her shirt. His voice caught hard. “Yes—I brought you in from the outside. And we both got rather dirty.” He awkwardly tried to pull the shirt from her, his face twisting as the threads fell apart in his hand. “What say you to a bath? I can draw one for you.”

The woman leaned into him, closing her eyes. Her white curls clung to his sweaty arm. “Walking,” she repeated in confusion. “Juniberries.”

Lotor pulled away, brushing hair from her face. He searched her eyes. Concern riddled through him. “Allura?”

She weakly opened up her eyes. And she stared at him for the longest stretch of silence, her full lips slack. Her brows tightened. “…A bath?” she suddenly repeated.

He managed a weak smile, still stroking her temple. “Yes, love. You could use one, as could I.”

Her shaky fingers released the fabric beneath her. She then somewhat disjointedly looked down at herself, staring at moldy jeans, fully rotted beneath her knees.

Lotor gently tilted her chin up, guiding her to look at him instead. His free hand moved down to unbutton her jeans. But his eyes were watery.

She sat there in even greater confusion. “I suppose I—I could use a bath,” she whispered. “Forgive me—I feel so weird. And sticky?” Her hand moved to rest upon her thigh, then lifted up with a strange sound. “What did we do?”

Lotor grabbed for her hand nervously. “Ah, we had a rather strange adventure outside. Can you stand, love?”

She gripped his hand right back, weakly at first but growing with a more intentional strength. “We were walking,” she repeated again, insistently. “And I grew very tired. You held me, and then the juniberries came over me—like a wave.” 

The hair on the nape of Lotor’s neck raised.

Allura’s eyes brightened. Her free hand lowered to her bare stomach. “I felt heavy here.” Her brows knitted together in frustration and realization. “Are we having a baby?”

He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “N-no.” He gently began to lower her jeans, which squelched off of her hips. He kneeled down to help her out of them.

Her hand came to rest upon his shoulder, and she began to breathe unsteadily. “Lotor,” she said suddenly, insistent. “Lotor. There was another. And he was purple, with—with these elf ears like Lord of the Rings. And fangs and claws.” Her eyes began to brighten in tears. “Oh.” She began to look around, dazed and bewildered. “And a princess—he spoke of a princess—”

Lotor looked up at her, face tight. He could see where this was going. “Allura,” he begged. “Look at me, please.” 

She did. Her pretty face was as tight as his own as her memories caught up with her body.

His voice caught. “Whatever flashes of things you recall—we’ll work through it later. For now, know that you are _safe_. And we’re going to bathe this dirt off of you.” His eyes began to mist, his voice growing more unsteady. “You’re very dirty, love—I can’t in good conscience let you walk around like this.” 

The indomitable Allura Singh stood mostly naked before him, with threads of her rotted clothes still clinging to her bare skin. Her eyes began to water hard. Her fingers trembled, and her knees began to shake. “…I was dead.” Her fingers moved to touch his haggard cheek. Suddenly, she was stroking his jaw. “Oh, Lotor. I was _dead_ —”

The full brunt of her memories began to weigh her down, such that she weakened, like iron bending in a forge. Lotor caught her as she collapsed against him. She buried her face in the sweaty crook of his neck, crying out in a moan of sorrow and of utter elation. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, holding her close.

His strength broke then. For all his attempts to be strong for her—he broke hard.

Lotor’s cheeks ran with tears as he felt Allura stroke his face and his ears. She pressed kisses to his neck as she cried. He leaned into her, breathing in her scent as if she were oxygen alone. And he covered her with himself, pulling her to him despite all the dirt between them. He kissed her cheek and then her lips, his breath and tears mixing with her own.

He could feel it in every fiber of her being.

_I missed you—_

_I missed you—_

It was all he could do to pull away, searching her watery eyes, caressing the soft petals of her mouth. He managed a weak laugh. “We—we need to clean you up, love. And find you clothes.”

Her small hand came to rest on the hem of his jeans, and she searched his eyes, still overwhelmed. She did not want to let go. “I don’t want to lose you. I—I might close my eyes, and you’ll be gone again. Or I’ll be gone again, and back in a box or a field, I don’t know—”

“—I won’t leave you,” he promised, stroking her cheek. “I won’t.”

“Even in the bath?”

Lotor leaned forward, face breaking as he brushed his nose against hers. “Even then.”

* * *

The resurrected Allura Singh soon rested in the bathtub on the airplane, her body hidden by bubbles, her white hair floating in the water. She listlessly raised her arm, watching the water slip down her dark skin. She seemed oddly enamored with sensation itself—as if perhaps the quantum realm had muted some aspect of her senses.

Lotor was kneeling on the tiles, working a pleasant shampoo into her hair. He touched her as much as he could—and she leaned into his touch without question, closing her eyes, simply feeling the tremble in his hands. The love he still had.

“How long has it been?” she pleaded. “I feel so unstuck with things.”

His voice was watery. “It’s been over a year.”

She reached up, dripping water onto the tiles to touch his shampoo-riddled knuckles. “Oh, that’s so very long,” she complained, her sweet voice twisting in pain. “I thought—perhaps a month or two.” She weakly began to pull at his hand, guiding him to the side so she could see him. 

The man followed along, moving against the tiles so that he faced her.

Allura’s face broke at the tears in his eyes. She reached up, her gaze sharper and more aware. The bath water swished as she ran her fingers down his haggard cheek. “But I see it now, the bags under your eyes. I don’t remember these being so dark. And—and these lines at the corner of your eyes.”

Lotor leaned into her touch, closing his eyes and moving to kiss her palm.

The woman swallowed hard. “And you’ve not—in all that time, you’ve not found someone else?”

His lips trembled against her palm. His eyes opened to focus on her. “How could I?”

“Well, it’s just that…you’re the great Lotor Dalir.” She managed a weak, pitiful smile. It shook on her lips. “Surely, you would have moved on. I would have wanted you to be happy, you know.”

He swallowed as if his throat were tightening up. A noise escaped him, like a complaint. “Easier said than done.”

Her white brows knitted together with great emotion. “I can feel it on you, even.” Her fingers slid down his jaw, tracing down his collar, then to his enduring, slow heartbeat. “You’ve been so unhappy. You feel like you’ve not ridden the Wife in forever.”

That did it. The man raised his hands to stroke hers, the soap suds slipping between them. His expression pulled in great pain.

He hadn’t ridden the Wife. Or raced at all.

Her fingers splayed out against his chest, pressing in to feel his heartbeat. The material of his shirt dampened under her fingers, creating a star shape that—when she pulled her hand away—reminded her of the upside-down star on the armor of Emperor Lotor.

She froze, haunted.

Allura stared up at him helplessly, her breath hitching. Her eyes began to water once more.

Before her were the same sad eyes. The raw ache.

Lotor gently grabbed for her hand, pulling it to his lips as he eyed her. “I didn’t want to leave your side,” he said suddenly, his voice halting hard. “I swear to you, they had to tear you from me. I kept waiting for you to wake up.”

Her memory flashed. Long, purple fingers with claws had pressed against her cheek. “ ** _Come on, now. Wake for me_**.”

She swallowed hard before confessing, voice breaking, “I’m not entirely sure how well I can explain it, but…truly, you never left. Some version of you was with me.” There was a hopeful curiosity in her at that. “And…I don’t think I entirely left you either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all! So sorry for my recent absence from the Lotura archive here in the last month. I've been really distracted with family and real-life, and then...ahhh, I may have also started another Lotura/Zonerva AU writing project that I might need to upload to AO3 soon as well, haha. Idk why, but plot bunnies for Lotura keep reproducing in my brain, and here I expected that my interest in this ship would wane after a while. Instead, I think as time goes by, it's just become this special little place. It's kind of a good escape from the real world, but also with so much potential for both shenanigans and angst and comedy that I can't help but want to write it, haha. 
> 
> In the meantime, it feels like the lotura fandom continues to quiet down, but if anyone is still with me and still reading these crazy AUs and crossovers, I just want to say I really appreciate you and hope that we can continue to have fun this year! Seems like there's only so many Lotura writers left, but if you're ever in need of additional Lotura content, I do have a tumblr where I reblog art and also post small lotura drabbles. You can [find me here](https://the-lightning-strikes-again.tumblr.com)! I've also been thinking of getting a twitter account since I guess that's where the lotura fandom has largely moved to? Or at least that they're still very active on that platform. I'm thinking about it. Idk, social media is wild sometimes, haha. 
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts on this latest chapter in a review! Your reviews keep me engaged and help me feel like I'm not the last person left this fandom. Thank you for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time: LunarMagnolia, Espanholina, Star-gazer, gabi_lotura, adharraa, Wallflwr97, and Sophtt! I really appreciate it! 
> 
> Per some feedback I've received across fics, I am trying a new format for review replies and am choosing to use the AO3 comment function to send replies now. I believe this should send an email to you directly with my thanks, but if for some reason you don't receive it, my reply should appear in the comments section for the last chapter. Thank you again, all! And, guh, so sorry this new chapter is so late!

Princess Allura paced on the plane. She looked to the closed bedroom doors hiding Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh, pressing her lips together. The roar of the airplane engines hid any conversation she might have been able to eavesdrop upon. Her elfin ears flicked in anxiety, and then she looked down at herself, her once-beautiful sari now bearing the dirt of graves—and a few pickle-juice stains. Some of the seams had busted along one side, which disturbed how the material stretched over her baby bump.

Her eyes watered. She made a pathetic noise, turning helplessly to Honerva. “How will I explain this? Will she despise me for it?” Her breath stalled. “Or perhaps…the other Lotor, the one from my world, has poisoned her against me, and she believes I am yet a witch.”

The mother lay across a couch with her head in Zarkon’s lap, her simple robes hanging off the edge along with straggly, white hair. Tired but amused gold eyes focused upon the princess. “Nonsense,” she called tiredly. “For I am the Witch of Persia, and she loves me. Rightfully so.”

Princess Allura gave her a flat, worried look. Then she turned to Zarkon, who had taken to stroking his fingers through Honerva’s wild hair. “I can’t even hear what they’re saying to each other.” 

Zarkon looked utterly exhausted and aged, but there was a light in the corners of his eyes for the first time. He raised a dark brow. “That is a blessing, princess. Together, my son and Allura Singh babble nonsense most days.” His face twitched in a mix of joy and irritation. “You will see.”

She held her swollen belly, swallowing hard. She turned away, continuing to pace, only to stop at the counter and grab for another pickle slice, munching on it apprehensively. Although the Dalir family had accepted her whole-heartedly, any tensions she had with Allura Singh could mean an ousting yet.

**_You will see._ **

“But the dress,” she complained, voice catching. “It was hers, and I ruined it. And I’ve unsettled everything about her life as well.”

“You _recalled_ her to life,” Zarkon retorted. “She had no life without you.”

Princess Allura made a helpless whining sound. “Well, it ah, it just seems that she would have many reasons to dislike me or be suspicious, is all.” The more comfortable she grew around the family, the more she treated them like her old paladin friends. Like her own family. She plopped down on a nearby seat, still munching away, looking down at her muddy slippers. She tried to hide her feet beneath the hem of her skirts. She felt utterly unroyal.

And it was then that the bedroom door opened.

The resurrected and recently bathed Allura Singh stood in the bedroom doorway, wearing a dark blue bathrobe that most certainly belonged to Lotor. Her small hands were hidden by the too-big sleeves. Her long hair glistened from a bath, curling about her in an array, catching the morning light from the plane window. Her eyes were bright and anxious as they landed upon an equally unsettled Princess Allura, who bit down awkwardly on a pickle slice, eyes wide.

Allura Singh’s eyes widened as well. She froze upon the image of Princess Allura.

The whole of the plane fell silent.

Allura Singh leaned against the door in surprise and increasing exhaustion. “Oh,” she called weakly. Her sweet voice hitched up, her eyes widening even larger, to the size of dinner platters. “Oh.” She somewhat blearily turned her neck, disjointedly waving her too-long sleeve to catch Lotor’s attention. “Lotor, you were right! She _does_ look like an elf version of me, and she _is_ very pretty and very pregnant too!”

The princess swallowed hard on her pickle slice, her marked cheeks flushing. Her body remained frozen on the chair, as if hoping that she could appear largely unassuming—or else blend into the surroundings.

The human woman turned back, pressing her lips together in determination as she looked down. She seemed a bit clumsy still and uncertain of her steps. She held on tightly to the wall, her white brows knitting together. “Please forgive me, everyone,” she babbled out, voice straining happily. Her eyes were still bloodshot from tears. “I feel so much heavier in this world than the last. And I still feel confused about some things, but I know I am in fact home. And I’ve—I’ve been wanting to meet this other version of me. How many times in your life do you get such an opportunity?” She paused, her sweet voice catching in an odd embarrassment. She looked down at herself, as if realizing only then that she was still in just a bathrobe.

From behind her, a frazzled Lotor Dalir appeared. His long hair glistened from water, suggesting he’d taken a bath right alongside Allura Singh. He wore sweatpants and an old shirt bearing the symbol of the Galran empire—Galra Tech, as the princess had come to know. His eyes were bloodshot with tears, his face yet in a daze of awe. “Allura, perhaps you should still lie down—”

The human woman held onto one of the backs of the chairs, forcing one leg before the other. A little gold anklet glimmered from her ankle. “Oh, tish tosh. I’ve been lying down in this world for a long time. I’ve such a need to _move_. And don’t try to stop me.”

Lotor came behind her, gently grabbing onto her arm to steady her. He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Yes, love, but you’ve been through…many things. I do think you should sit down.”

“I want to talk to her,” Allura complained lightly. “The elf-me.” She turned her gaze to the surprised Honerva and Zarkon on the couch, her eyes lighting up. “Oh, but I must—I must also embrace your parents, for they are mine as well, and I missed you all so terribly.” Her eyes welled up with big tears. Her throat tightened up hard, and her voice failed her.

The human Allura Singh, it seemed, was quite overwhelmed. Her knees weakened.

Lotor gently wrapped his other arm around her waist, holding her up. “Come here, _moosh-moosh-am_ ,” he murmured to her. “Let us sit you down.”

She weakly leaned her heavy cheek against his chest, her face relieved as she tightened her fingers around his arm. It seemed she delighted in solid things, but most readily in Lotor himself. “I am sorry,” she said to him, voice weak. “It’s not every day a person gets resurrected, you know.”

“No, but it _is_ typical for you to overlook yourself.” He helped her to sit down on a nearby couch, pulling away to adjust the folds of her robe so that her legs were still covered. He then grabbed a nearby blanket, tucking it over her lap.

Allura Singh sat there like a doll, weakly allowing Lotor to pull her arms out from under the blanket. She looked almost embarrassed, her face flushing. “I’m not usually so helpless.”

And there she was, the indomitable Allura Singh, sitting as a ghost upon the plane—nearly a year and a half after her death. She leaned her head back against the couch, her wild curls streaming wet around her. She closed her eyes, as if in dizziness.

Lotor turned to the princess, looking worried. “She has bursts of energy, and then crippling exhaustion. Is that normal?”

The princess’s ears flicked back, and she glanced at Allura Singh. “I’ve never resurrected one whose energy was torn from me. But as I warned, I suspect her exhaustion has to do with such trauma.”

“Will she overcome it soon?” His long, dark fingers brushed a curly lock away from the human woman’s face.

“I’m sure, but it may just take time for her to regain her footing,” the princess said, forcing her voice to be soothing, despite the tremble in her hands. This woman before her held the secrets of the universe—all the great mysteries of the afterlife, which not even Oriande could explain.

Allura Singh knew intimately the quantum realms of death. She knew Emperor Lotor, and she was suffering from his violence. No doubt, traumatized by the man holding her down, refusing to let her go free—

Honerva weakly pulled away from Zarkon, her gold eyes brightening with tears. “I should like to embrace her.” 

The human woman opened up bleary eyes, her gaze focusing upon Honerva. She raised up a hand, the long sleeve of her robe flopping downward over her fingers. And then her hand flopped back to the blanket, and she whined. “I am sorry, dear family. My legs are so tired, and Lotor has tucked me in so tightly.”

Lotor sat down beside her, his long leg brushing against hers. He continued to hold one of her hands, stroking her small fingers, which twitched against his own. “You should rest.” 

She weakly turned her neck, and her face tightened she searched his gaze. “The juniberries won’t come for me again, will they? I don’t want to leave you.” 

The man’s expression cracked in pain. “You won’t leave me. The princess has made sure of it.”

Her fingers squeezed around his, and her expression faltered. She closed her eyes, then opened them in fear of the black. Her big eyes brightened with tears. “The thorns—they could hurt you. I felt them hurt you.”

Lotor’s white brows knitted together in confusion. “There are no thorns here,” he murmured to her comfortingly.

“There aren’t?” she whispered, weakly glancing about. “Oh, it’s so confusing to go from one reality to another.” And then her eyes landed upon Princess Allura once more. A great confusion overcame her, and then a spark of recognition lit in her gaze. She fell mesmerized at the sight of the alien woman. “And—and that’s my sari, isn’t it.”

The princess hesitated. She awkwardly hid her scarred hands in the ruined material of her borrowed sari as she moved to stand, and she struggled to meet Singh’s eye. “My deepest apologies,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’d hoped to present myself in better form than this.” She awkwardly raised one of the ruined folds of the sari, biting her lip. Compared to the petite and slim Allura Singh, she felt like a large beast. She moved to place a hand over her pregnant belly, then awkwardly lowered it, as if afraid she were calling attention to her shameful deed of spreading her legs. “I am, ah, Princess Allura of Altea. And as soon as I am able, I will work to replace your sari.”

Allura Singh blinked at her, inspecting her curiously. And then her face stretched with a tired smile. “How pretty you are,” she cooed in awe. She gently pulled at Lotor’s hand, insistent. “Lotor. _Aziz-am_. Look at how pretty she is.” She then pulled away to touch her own face, still staring at Allura as if she were the heavens. “Am _I_ that pretty?”

Princess Allura wrung her hands awkwardly, her elfin ears flicking back in worry. She feared to speak, for it seemed that perhaps Emperor Lotor hadn’t poisoned Singh against her. But she felt strange, standing before her human counterpart, whose skin did not bear deep scars from regenerating the multiverse. Whose eyes burned with a bright innocence.

She felt suddenly all too alien to exist even on the same plane.

The princess tried to speak, but her throat closed up, and her eyes brightened with tears. _Please accept me; please let me stay here,_ she wanted to cry. _Please tell me what you saw of Emperor Lotor._ It took her several ticks to compose herself. She wiped her eyes of tears, streaking them across her pink markings on her cheek. “I, um, I suppose as with everything in my life, this is not quite how I imagined our meeting.”

The human woman made weak grabby hands. “I want to—see you and…ask many questions.” Her hands fell to her blanketed lap in exhaustion. Her strength faltered, her neck struggling to hold up her head. She leaned her cheek against Lotor, her eyes big and innocent—and increasingly exhausted. “But I feel…so….” 

Princess Allura’s face grew tight with earnest anxiety. She rested a hand over her pregnant stomach. “It’s my fault,” she confessed, voice pained. “Your energy was torn during the…transition.”

There was another silence.

Allura Singh watched her innocently, a slight understanding working through her tired eyes. “The vines?”

“Yes.” The princess awkwardly cleared her throat. Her heart pounded in want to even say his name. The Emperor Lotor had ripped the vines—

But the human girl closed her eyes, relaxing against Lotor. Her breath puffed against his chest and his own wet locks, displacing a few strands. Her eyes welled with tears. And then suddenly, emotion overcame her. Her face tightened in a raw agony. Her weak fingers curled in against Lotor’s shirt. She blinked several times until tears ran down her face. “The vines.”

Princess Allura stepped back, her elfin ears drooping in panic that she’d reminded the human of her own traumatic journey across the universe. She hid her scarred hands in her sari’s folds, her lips quivering. “The, ah, the Ancients believed all life sprang from juniberries, you see.” She managed a weak, watery smile. “And the petals and the vines—they carried your energy back here. That is the only way I know how to do it.” 

Lotor moved to stroke Singh’s hair, leaning his cheek against the top of her head. His eyes swiveled to the princess in concern. “Perhaps you both should rest for now.” 

The princess’s breath hitched. Her fingers trembled. “Of course.” And then she awkwardly moved to sit down, attempting to brush the tears from her eyes. “Um, I’m just—” Words failed her, for fear of being rejected or creating further tension.

Allura Singh’s bleary eyes focused on her, searching her from beneath the safety of Lotor’s chin. Her tears gleamed down her cheeks in the sunlight. With great concentration, she reached out to the princess, her fingers trembling weakly. “The vines—” Her face broke in pain. Her fingers weakened. “I felt you in the vines.”

Princess Allura swallowed hard, her vision blurring. “You did?”

The human woman’s breath hitched. She tried to make grabby hands. “You’re so sad,” she cried. “So _very_ sad, just like him.”

The _him_ in question was Emperor Lotor.

The princess reached out.

Her fingers tightened around the human’s, and suddenly she began to tear up. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered.

* * *

In the midst of Zarkon and Honerva moving in to greet their own Allura, the Princess Allura managed to stifle her tears. She sat back down on the opposite couch, watching in consternation and delight as Zarkon and Honerva Dalir sat down beside Allura Singh, gathering up the human into tight embraces—shooing Lotor away so they could have a moment with her—

The human girl laughed tearfully, weakly attempting to hug them back and agreeing that—yes, she would stay alive this time and wouldn’t try to die before them ever again.

Princess Allura watched as even Zarkon’s eyes misted in a deep emotion over the return of his future daughter-in-law. He was a large and tall man, but he grabbed onto Allura Singh’s hand as if it were glass, and he patted it gently, as if to prove to himself she were truly alive.

Her lips twitched weakly, trying to imagine a world where Emperor Zarkon might have held her hand and patted it so, in delight of a Princess Allura of Altea as his daughter-in-law.

As the mother of his grandchild.

The princess looked down at herself, suddenly feeling exhausted by all the joy around her and the remaining distress in her own heart. While the humans chattered and cried happily, she moved to lay down on the opposite couch, grabbing for a blanket and closing her eyes.

She soon felt Honerva’s thin fingers stroke briefly against her temple, in a light reiteration that they still cared for her too.

The princess drifted off into much-needed sleep, comforted.

* * *

Allura Singh eventually regained some energy after resting in the main seating area of the airplane. After a time, she had enough to hold out her hands and concentrate, her white brows knitting together.

Lotor watched her, working to open a bag of crackers for her. “What are you doing, love?” he murmured, voice tense in worry.

She stuck her tongue out, then began to pout, lowering her arms. “Well, in the other realm, I could conjure a funnel cake, with simply my mind.” Her hands flopped back down. “I can’t do that here, I suppose.”

His lips twitched. “A funnel cake?”

She turned to him, eyes widening in delight. “Oh, yes! And—and the Lotor who was with me, he loved them too!” She raised her hand to her face. “He has cat-like pupils, and they dilated to moons just like Kova’s do when you feed him treats. It was great fun.”

Lotor turned to the princess, who had fallen asleep on the couch opposite of them. His voice softened in worry. “And he did not ever hurt you, did he?”

Allura searched his eyes in innocent confusion. “Why would he?” she challenged lightly.

His face broke. “Love, I’ve never killed anyone before as he has.” He reached up and stroked her cheek as if she were glass. “Tell me what he did to you.”

She whined at him. “He was a perfect gentleman.” She leaned into him, raising up her hands. “Why, I cranked open his mouth and touched his fangs and pulled on his ears. And do you know what he did? He _let_ me.” She began to lightly pull at his jaw to touch his teeth. “Like this.”

Lotor’s eyes blew wide, and he sputtered as he pulled away from her in a flurry of amusement and shock, a few crackers falling to the floor.

Allura happily moved forward to poke at him again, pulling at his lip with something of a giggle. “Just like this, and he held quite a bit more still than _you_ are, sir.”

The man made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, his bloodshot eyes narrowing on her playfully as she tapped one of his canines. He lowered the remains of the cracker sleeve, then gently grabbed onto her wrist. He turned to kiss her palm, slowly. His voice was soft. “Did he do this in response?”

She flushed prettily. “N-no. But—” Her eyes widened in impassioned emotion. “This man with your face and your voice…he was very kind to me.” Those big eyes began to mist happily. “He even took me to see my father. Well, _her_ father. But this King Alfor was so very similar. The entire realm was very welcoming.”

He leaned forward, searching her eyes. “So this…Emperor did not hurt or force you to do anything?”

“Not at all,” she said softly. She reached out and stroked his gaunt cheek. Her fingers still trembled with a weakness from her odd resurrection. “He comforted me and told me that all tears and pain fade. No one, he said, is ever alone. And he held me as I cried, in want for you.”

Lotor swallowed hard, his throat tightening. He leaned his heavy cheek against Allura’s fingers, and she stroked his rough skin.

“He was in pain,” Allura whispered. “His circumstances, and hers—” Her eyes flickered to the sleeping princess, whose face was yet drying of tears as she slept under a thick blanket. “It’s all so very sad.”

“The princess says he killed people,” Lotor whispered back in concern. “And used her.”

She weakly set her forehead against his. “It’s not like that, I promise you.” And then she moved to grab onto his hands, weaving her trembling fingers around his own. “I—I discovered things that not even this counterpart of mine knows. And perhaps, in exchange for bringing me back, I can give her peace.”

The human man’s face pulled in great pain. He closed his eyes, his brows knitting together fervently as his fingers tightened around her hand. Some part of him felt a weight lift from him—a fear that his innate character was deficient by virtue of the Emperor’s existence. But if this Emperor were not truly an evil man…

His eyes burned, and he moved to press his lips against her cheek.

Allura’s eyes rose to heaven in joy at the feeling of her Lotor.

But her joy faltered only in wonder at the thought of the Emperor who remained in the quantum realm, convinced that his Allura hated him.

* * *

Princess Allura dreamed. Her fingers twitched against the thick, fluffy blanket wrapped around her, and in the midst of her sleep, she saw hazy images of her Lotor—a tall, strong man, kneeling in a field of flowers, holding onto a single juniberry that had dried up and died in his hands. His purple face was worn in a tight agony as he stroked the browned petals, careful of his claws. His sharp cheeks bore tears.

She peered at the sight in curiosity, walking forward.

Her bare feet slipped against living flowers. “ _Lotor_?”

In her dream, Lotor did not glance up or appear to hear her. He lowered the dead flower. The wind blew his white hair into his eyes, hiding his stricken expression. 

Then suddenly, her world warped.

In the real world, the plane shook with a mild turbulence. Princess Allura’s eyes opened blearily, still misted with tears. Disoriented from the dreams, the princess simply stared out before her for a time, still seeing the strange image of a forlorn Emperor Lotor, holding a dead flower—

Before her, on the other side of the plane, one Allura Singh sat—swaddled up in blankets and the blue robe of Lotor Dalir. She was munching on crackers, her lips and drying hair bearing a few crumbles. “Oh, you’re awake again!”

The princess stared back. Then she inhaled shakily, touching her face and then her belly beneath the blanket. Within her hummed the living, bright energy of the growing baby. But the child’s energy was distorted with stress, as if it had picked up on her own.

Allura Singh managed a weak smile. “How are you, um, feeling? Did it help to sleep some? I am feeling better from resting and from eating these crackers. Have you tried them?”

The human’s sweet babbles inspired the princess’s brows to knit. Awkwardly, she pulled off her blanket, sitting up in a daze and a groan, her body aching from the weight of the child. In that moment, she remembered all the strange differences between herself and her human counterpart.

Allura Singh was beautiful and unscarred and without distortions to her figure from pregnancy.

It hurt to look at her.

The princess instead looked down at the patterns of the soft blanket, her elfin ears drooping. She rubbed her swollen belly. “I am sorry,” she said, wiping her face. She realized then that she had drooled on the couch pillow. She bit her lip, feeling ashamed of her own disheveled appearance. “I am usually in better sorts than this.”

“As am I,” the human woman said softly. She awkwardly held out a cracker. “Lotor says—my Lotor—that you have awful morning sickness at times. You should eat.”

Princess Allura’s eyes flickered up to Allura Singh’s, vulnerable and hesitant. In that moment, their very positions were mirror images of each other. She reached out with scarred fingers to grab onto a cracker, tearing up all over again for reasons she could not explain.

Singh’s eyes focused on the scars that marred her fingers and her forearm.

The princess whispered, “Thank you.”

Her human face lit up in a soft smile. “Of course. These crackers are my absolute favorite, since they’re sweet. And I do like sweet things.”

Princess Allura could not help it. Her lips twitched. “I like sweet things as well,” she said softly, then crunched down on the cracker.

Singh leaned forward. “And sparkly things,” she added, voice lifting happily. “Jewelry with a bright shine.”

That did it. The princess’s lips stretched, and she raised a hand to her mouth. Her voice was muffled, carrying a slight, hesitant joy. “Yes, bright gems that shine with many colors when light is upon them.”

“Ah, yes!” the human breathed, her bare toes wiggling happily. “Do you have diamonds in your universe?”

The princess leaned forward, her elfin ears flicking forward in interest. “Diamonds?”

“A gem that appears white but shines with the whole of the rainbow.” Singh began to look down at her own fingers, and then at her ankle, beginning to pout. “Oh, but I do not have an example to show you. Lotor—he gave me diamonds once, I know not where they are anymore—”

Princess Allura’s bright, interested expression faltered. “Oh.” She swallowed hard, then said, voice straining as she forced a weak smile on her face. “Your Lotor, I have learned, is very kind.”

Singh checking her ears, searching for earrings and finding none. “As is yours,” she said innocently.

The princess’s fingers tightened into the material of the blanket around her. Her ears drooped. For a time, she said nothing. Then, “I fear his kindness extends only as far as one’s use for his agendas.” She moved to protectively wrap her arms around her swollen belly, where the energy of the child of Lotor still flickered with unease.

Allura Singh’s expression faltered. She awkwardly patted the blanket around her, looking in either direction. Lotor Dalir had slipped away, back to the bedroom in search of more appropriate clothes for her to wear. Zarkon and Honerva had once again fallen asleep on a couch on the far end of the plane, too exhausted from the night’s ordeal.

The human pressed her lips together, then weakly pushed herself forward, her legs and arms flexing with the effort. “I had nothing to offer your Lotor, and yet he helped me and comforted me while I was crying.”

The princess’s eyes misted. “I felt him hold you down. He attacked me when I tried to rescue you.”

Allura Singh’s white curls slipped down her robed shoulders. She shakily held out her hands. “Please, I must speak of the truth to you. He was—he thought a demon sorcerer was taking me away. He tore the vines in belief that he was protecting me.”

Princess Allura recalled the odd moment of Emperor Lotor reaching out to her energy, a plea and sorrow in him. She inhaled shakily, grabbing onto the human’s hands. “You must not understand. I believed he was a good man as well, until he revealed his true nature—”

“—That is what I mean,” the human pleaded softly, squeezing the princess’s fingers. “I know his true nature, and if you just let me explain, then—”

“—He is not like your Lotor,” Princess Allura cut in, voice pained. She pulled away. “Do not be drawn in as I was. He killed my people for their energy and nearly destroyed the universe. He—” her voice broke—”he got me with child, by deceiving me. No doubt, he sought to use you for his own gain. Perhaps he even asked you to clear his name. Did he?”

Allura Singh’s eyes welled up. For a moment, a great distance swelled between them, for she did not understand the paranoia and pain with which Princess Allura so referred to Lotor. Her own Lotor had been charming and flirty—and utterly noble. “B-but, he loves you. I could see it. He felt great pain about how things ended between you two.”

The princess began to cry, her elfin ears drooping. “You don’t know what he did.” Her breath hitched. “Whatever he said to you—it was a manipulation only for some end. Just like how he deceived so many others…”

The human woman swallowed hard, biting her lip. She tapped her fingers together. “Do you refer to the colony?”

Her elfin ears flicked. Bloodshot eyes grew weary—and yet, for all of her paranoia, every line in her body longed for a hope of some kind. “Yes. What did he tell you of it?”

Allura Singh hesitated. “I did not learn of the details from him, but from a boy who had died in your world, named Bandor.”

The princess’s breath hitched. “Bandor—that was…Romelle’s brother. One who’d been taken.”

“He told me everything,” the human woman pressed, eyes earnest. “Please, hear out his story? I can tell you what I know, and it might—it might help you. I _want_ to help you. I know your sadness; I felt it in the vines.”

The scarred princess’s eyes watered. Her fingers began to tremble. “What did Bandor tell you?”

Allura Singh held out more crackers. And then she haltingly began to explain what she had learned—that a witch named Haggar had sensed Altean energy, and in Lotor’s attempts to raise an army and hide their signatures at the same time, he had created experimental technology that backfired in a terrible way. The result was Haggar moving to inspect the quantum realm, with Lotor using the destruction and harvested Alteans as a cover-up to preserve the location of the remaining Alteans she could not sense.

Haggar had been curious and had taken his technology for her own use, resulting in—Allura Singh stumbled—something called a _Komar_.

As the human spoke, the Princess Allura grew increasingly unsettled, her fingers trembling. She rubbed her pregnant belly almost obsessively, tears brimming in her eyes. “And—and Bander? He was not forced or deceived?”

Singh said softly, “He said they first learned of the threat from this Haggar upon landing at their new location.” She swallowed hard. “But…they wanted to protect their families from being found, and to fight for a home. A real one. Lotor tried to give them that chance, even if it failed.” 

The princess suddenly stood up, her face screwing in a nausea and a horror. She looked as though she had seen a ghost. A cold sweat had broken out on her temple. Her dark skin had goose-bumped. “He—it all had sounded before that he’d deceived and murdered them for power.”

“I don’t know what all was said and done in your final arguments,” Allura Singh pleaded. “I know it ended terribly and that he became very cruel—he said he was blind and confused by the quintessence of your world—”

“—I cannot listen to more,” the princess cut in, voice catching hard. Her breath hitched. She looked as if the world were falling apart all over again.

The thought of a man beneath that quintessence-corrupted visage of hate—simply a man— Her knees weakened. “He said they perished in his experiments. And Romelle and Krolia—the Sincline ships—”

Allura Singh worriedly struggled to pull off the blanket around her. Her limbs trembled. “I have upset you.”

The pregnant princess held on tightly to the edge of the couch as she kneeled on the floor. “Did I kill an innocent man?” Her gaunt, worn face tightened, her voice breaking. “Did I?” She held onto her swollen belly, where the last living vestige of Emperor Lotor was knitting itself inside her.

Suddenly in her memory, her distorted understandings began to unravel— That perhaps his hands stroking her body _had_ been from true love. That the twitch of his lips against hers had been a true smile of delight. That the baby growing within her was a happy accident, conceived in lust and affection and desire for companionship—

Allura Singh’s brows knitted together. “I don’t know if it’s…that simple,” she said, voice in an ache. “It seems to be a terrible mess of things, as it went along.”

The princess’s distress and Singh’s awkward attempts to comfort her began to wake up Zarkon and Honerva. 

The human Allura kneeled down beside the princess, her robe unsettling against her legs, her eyes watering. “It’s—it’s alright.” She shakily reached out. Her too-long sleeves flopped. “He knows he went mad. He said he was blinded—”

Princess Allura desperately reached out to her, leaning her cheek against the girl’s shoulder—the blue robe still carrying the inherent scent of Lotor. Tears squeezed from her eyes. “Lotor,” she cried. “Lotor.” Her lips pulled back in a sob.

Allura Singh’s weak limbs struggled to wrap around the princess, but she began to cry as well, feeling the princess’s pain as if it were her own. “I—thought it would help you to know.” She disjointedly tried to stroke the princess’s hair. “That he does love you.”

The door to the back bedroom flew open, with a fearful, wild-eyed Lotor Dalir moving forward. A long shirt and shorts slipped from his hands. “What has happened?” He kneeled down beside them.

At the sound of his voice and the flicker of white hair in her vision, the princess began to cry more.

Singh pleaded, “I told her about the Emperor Lotor, who helped me in the other world.”

A half-awake Honerva slipped from her blankets, her gold eyes worried. Behind her, Zarkon moved to help her in her weakness. “Princess? Allura, what on earth is this—You should all be resting.”

The princess leaned brokenly against her counterpart, tears streaking down her cheeks. She was in that moment entirely inconsolable—her mind replaying over and over again each snide remark, each escalation of violence and the pain of Lotor’s confessions…his pure, unadulterated scream of fury as quintessence snuffed out his bright light—the heart-pounding terror that the universe was ripping apart—Romelle crying by herself in mourning for her brother…

Allura Singh looked up, frightened. “Please, I—” She blinked, tears running down her face as her breath hitched. “I made a mistake, I think.”

Honerva dropped down, moving away from Zarkon, gently pulling the princess into her own arms. “Princess?” she demanded. “You need to breathe. Your baby will suffer under this much stress.” Her voice strained as she rubbed the pregnant girl’s back.

Her eyes met Allura Singh’s in fear.

The human girl began to cry. “I’ve hurt her. I did not mean to.” She then tried to conjure another funnel cake with her mind in hopes of offering it, only for her breath to hitch when she realized that she was in the living realm once more.

Suddenly, she stared down at her fingers, as if they were not her own, confused. 

Lotor gathered her up, bunching the blue robe right along with her. The human woman clung right back, sinking into his strong arms as if he were her only tether to reality.

Honerva’s eyes flickered up to Lotor. Her voice caught uneasily. “Go into the bedroom for now—your presence is upsetting her.”

The young man faltered, swallowing hard. “Of course.” His large hands tightened upon the human Allura, in fear that she would be taken away for reasons he did not understood. Without a word, he turned around, carrying a crying Allura Singh with him. The blue robe swished against his legs as he murmured soft things in Punjabi to calm her.

Meanwhile, the princess’s shaky fingers tightened into Honerva’s simple clothes, her breath harsh gasps between pure, mournful cries.

Honerva moved to stroke her hair. “Breathe, child,” she murmured. Her voice faltered. “You are safe.”

Honerva glanced helplessly at her husband.

Zarkon kneeled down as well, his aged, scarred face pulling in great pain. He looked to the bedroom, where Lotor was helping Singh to sit down, stroking her face and kissing her temple as she cried. Then Zarkon looked back to the princess, who sobbed out the name _Lotor_ again and again. Honerva struggled to hold her up.

Paternal instinct overwhelmed him. He reached out. “Princess.”

The princess’s wide, bleary eyes stared out at him from a reddened face. And she shakily moved to him, hiding her face in his shoulder as she sobbed, in want for a parent to hold her.

The father held her as if she were glass, his dark eyes flickering up in concern to Honerva. No doubt, Allura Singh had revealed something troublesome regarding the afterlife and this strange Emperor Lotor who’d gotten the princess pregnant. “What did Allura tell you?” he murmured to her, voice halted.

For a time, the princess failed to respond. And then she lost energy, her sobs dying away into hitched breaths. Her eyes stared off blearily into the distance. “Lotor.” Her voice was watery, and another sob shook through her. “My Lotor was—beneath all that quintessence—” 

She hiccupped, remembering that she was pregnant, and with the child of Lotor. She pulled away, wrapping her arms around her belly. “I killed him,” she cried softly, her ears drooping. “For what? I don’t know, I d-don’t—”

“—You said he killed your people,” Honerva cut in softly, eyes searching her own.

The princess looked up, her expression breaking in such helplessness that she did not look to be a stalwart princess, but someone quite lost. “He s-said as much.” She disjointedly wiped her nose, still trembling. “He said he s-sacrificed them. For experiments.” Her face screwed up in pain. “And we’d—I’d just _given_ myself to him—”

She broke all over again, her dirty sari twisting about her as her white curls slipped down her shoulder. Her full lips pulled back in a cry of absolute anguish and joy—that she hadn’t given herself over to a murderer and liar, but to simply a man.

Simply an imperfect man.

Zarkon held her like glass, until her sobs subsided to silent tears.

Princess Allura leaned against him as if he were the only pillar she had. 

Within her, the child of Lotor meekly reverberated an unsteady energy—with a question.

She blinked, her breath puffing against the warm material of Zarkon’s shirt. Distantly, she raised her hand to her pregnant belly, shakily stroking it in a fondness for her baby. Tears slid down her cheeks, lighting up her Altean marks. “Your Allura says he loved me." Her brows furrowed as her breath hitched. “And he cared for her, even. And that the—the deaths weren’t quite as they seemed…”

Zarkon gently pulled her back, helping to steady her. 

The princess blearily looked down at her pregnant belly. Her face began to twist hard again in pain. “But the hate. I can’t…surely, he couldn’t see past my own, either.”

“Princess,” the human man said to her, voice firm. “If Allura Singh tells you something, then it is truth, for she would not lie.”

Princess Allura looked up, her face cracking. She swallowed hard, then nodded tightly.

Her hands tightened around her belly.

The baby within her briefly pressed its little hand against her own, its energy flickering with a simple love for its mother.

* * *

Meanwhile, Emperor Lotor of the Galra lay in the field of juniberry flowers within the quantum realm, staring up at the sky. Juniberries curled against his ears and cheeks, holding up his long locks with their stems. Grief flowed through him in waves, in which the realm’s natural magic comforted him. But then his memory returned.

It always returned.

He raised his clawed fingers to his cheek, remembering the harsh bite of Princess Allura’s power. Listlessly, he dragged his claws against his skin hard in a replication of the bite of the thorns she’d smacked him with.

Ruby blood welled upon the scratches on his cheek. He blinked, his brows knitting together as his breath hitched. Soon enough, the wounds closed up, the winds and soft air a merry balm.

The quantum realm did not allow injury or sickness or unhappiness to remain for long…

He bent his knee, the sunlight glinting off his armor in a glaring way. He accused the realm, “What sort of afterlife are you, that you afford me neither the peace I desire nor the opportunity to _wallow_ in my misery?” His clawed fingers fell to the flowers at his side, in a huff. “Either release me of my memory, or send me to another world, where I can forget what I am.”

In the distance, he knew others were forming onto the quantum realm, or else leaving it, in desire to live again, somewhere.

Lotor closed his eyes, attempting to feel the waves of power that ran through the quantum realm—the peace of ages, born out of the trillions in the universe who had died before him and had felt such compassion for any who ever lived—

He knew he could not pass on his own yet, for he had not achieved peace within himself to accept a new life. But he knew that alchemists—sorcerers and even necromancers—could access the realm, somehow. Manipulate things. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, face tensing. He knew he had the Mark of the Chosen—that he could have been an alchemist, if he’d just not attacked the White Lion…

His cheeks began to glow with his jagged marks. His breath hitched as he felt an unwieldy well of power within him.

Something untrained.

Something as desperate as himself.

He tried to remember the way in which Princess Allura’s power had felt when it interacted in the quantum realm. The threads of it. The construction.

But Lotor was so engrossed in attempting to connect with the power, to search out Princess Allura, he did not notice Honerva appearing at the edge of the field.

* * *

Honerva of Daibazaal knew objectively that it was best to leave her son alone. Zarkon had gently set her down and stroked her worn cheeks in comfort, saying that Lotor would come to see her true self in time. But that he needed time to do it, for his memories were still very raw—that the depth of abuse and manipulation had fragmented them all deeply. 

She’d felt hot tears slip from her eyes. Zarkon’s image had blurred before her.

His comforting murmurs blurred in and out of her ears as well, until she felt cold and isolated, as if lost inside a dark tunnel. Even as he pulled her into a tight embrace, stroking her hair, Honerva felt no comfort. Instead, she stared out in a vast daze as she cried in loss, unable to reconcile her past with her present.

It had resulted in her wandering away from Zarkon, to walk through the realm…

Zarkon had warned her not to approach Lotor. 

She knew better than this.

To try again so soon.

Honerva stood at the edge of the juniberry field, her arms wrapped around herself. Her white hair streamed about her in the wind. Her gold eyes were bright with tears as she searched for her son. The vast valley of flowers spanned between them, in places glowing with the outlines of people transitioning from life to the quantum realm. Flowers and leaves bent into a myriad of glowing shapes, but among them was the duller glimmer of her son’s armor. The white of hair.

Swallowing hard, she trekked forward, her boots softly padding through juniberry flowers that sparked with life.

She knew what she had to do.

“Lotor?” she called out, voice catching. “Lotor, please. I must—please, let me speak with you.”

In the near distance, she saw her lithe and healthy son laying in flowers (oh, how she couldn’t forget the image of his melted corpse). But instead of a flinch, his clawed fingers suddenly slammed down in fury. He turned up on his elbow, his white hair streaming against his cheeks…

…which glowed with the power of the Chosen.

She felt the power suddenly. It raised the hair on the nape of her neck and goose-bumped her skin.

Honerva backstepped in surprise.

Lotor’s eyes narrowed in pure hate as the purple glow fizzled from his cheeks. “Away from me, witch,” he snarled, voice a rasp. His face suddenly broke as he looked down at his hands, then touched his face, as if feeling something had broken. His eyes began to mist hard. “No. No.” He turned back, desperately grabbing onto one of the flowers, a moan of great sorrow in his voice. “I don’t feel it anymore. Where did it go. How do I—?”

She hesitated. “Lotor?”

Those hateful eyes—Zarkon’s eyes—snapped back up to her. His lips pulled back in pain. “You ruined it,” he retorted. “I was _connecting_. I might have found a way to—” His voice broke. Distressed, he grabbed for the flowers again.

Ripped petals streamed to the ground.

Honerva did not walk closer, in fear that this version of her son could in fact lash out. She swallowed hard, realizing that he had some sort of alchemical ability latent with him. But it was far from honed, and his power was merely wavering out into the nothingness, without aim.

Vision blurring, she kneeled down into the juniberries, raising her hands to show she intended no harm. 

She’d been practicing things to say.

Odd that it all twisted on her tongue precisely when she needed those words. She called out haltingly, “I know that—you must despise even my voice. And that you would not wish to see me.”

Her strong and beautiful son was breaking down again. Tears bubbled in his eyes as he sat up, desperately clenching juniberries, lost. “You ruined it,” he whispered. “ _You ruined it_.”

“I’ve--I’ve felt you remain in this field,” she said hesitantly. “Which, I understand now to be a field of transition, where people awake from life or return to it.”

“You ruined it,” he moaned again, hardly even listening. His lips pulled back in a sob, the proud line of his armored shoulders breaking as he stared at the torn juniberries in his hand. “You witch, you wicked and terrible excuse for a mother. I was _this close_ to feeling something…”

She flinched. Her own fingers began to dig into the juniberries in pain. “Please, Lotor. Please, look at me.”

He did.

The raw ache in his eyes left her breathless. In another life, perhaps she would have opened her arms, and perhaps he would have fallen into them, desperate for the comfort of a mother’s understanding love.

Neither of them moved.

The juniberries swayed in a merry wind.

Her voice wavered. “If you’re still here, it is because you are searching for something, yes? You want something from this field.”

Lotor blinked. Tears slid down his tight, distressed face. “I might have obtained it if you didn’t interrupt me for your own gains.” His breath hitched. “Go away. I cannot offer you what you want.”

Honerva’s eyes blurred. “Lotor, your power—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together. Perhaps it wouldn’t be helpful to tell him that his power had been aimless—a mere extension into the ether. “I’m not here for myself. I am here for you.”

The words inspired a broken scoff with him. “It’s in part because of you that I am even here in this realm, unable to pass on.” He brushed his cheeks angrily, pained. “All the things I’ve done. What I became. It all stems from you.”

“I know you want something you can’t find here,” she said, voice wavering. Her arms and legs trembled with an adrenaline. A fear. “I know you want to be as far away from me as you can get.”

“How astute.”

“I can help you achieve these things.” Her voice broke. “I would give anything to you, if it meant an end to the pains you have.” 

His eyes slid to her. His yellow sclarae glowed in the light. “You can’t fix anything.” His voice broke. “You can’t fix this.”

Her fingers trembled as she held out her hands. Power glowed to the surface of her skin. “I believe I can. To be here in this valley, you’re searching for someone, as your father was searching for me.” Her gold eyes narrowed in concentration, even as tears slid down her face. “I remember—you loved the Princess. Alfor’s daughter. You were happy with her, before…”

Even the mention of Princess Allura unsettled Lotor further. He stiffened where he sat, his ears flicking back against his skull in pain.

Honerva pressed, voice catching, “The map of the multiverse—I saw it, in restoring the threads of life and passing onto this realm. And I connected with Princess Allura’s spirit deeply, enough that I recall the unique signature of it. I can locate her for you in all of these stars and worlds. I can send you to her. And you would live again, my son. Away from me and your father, and all of this pain.” Her voice shook. “You would _live_.”

Lotor’s hands slipped away from the ruined juniberries in his lap, in consternation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, and VLD Honerva tosses in a plot twist! Lots of very high emotion in this chapter, so if you're still with me and this fic, then bless your soul for your high tolerance of angst and tears a;sdfjas;dfj. I do think we're moving toward a new arc in this story, though, continuing to build on the hope in past chapters. 
> 
> This chapter took me a long time to get out because honestly I just got side-tracked by several other stories, and then real-life shenanigans as;dlfjas. But I may have promised someone on tumblr that I would get a chapter out for this fic asap, so I'm sorry if something feels rushed! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think of this chapter, and if you have any questions, constructive criticisms, or ideas/requests! Thanks!


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